11/11/24

 Monday, November 11, 2024

D+6

1918, the Allied nations and Germany signed the armistice ending the fighting in the Great War, which had killed more than 15 million people

1939 Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America"

1961 "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller was published

2018 On the centenary of WWI Armistice Day French President Macron urged the world to reject Nationalism in a speech under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris

In bed by 9, awake at 4:24, and up at 4:30.  Lilly, sleeping on the carpet next to her mattress in the TV room, woke up at 4:40 and walked past me into the living room without realizing I was sitting in the recliner.  By 6:50, Lilly still hasn't awakened.  I have showered and put out the recycling.  I look out the kitchen window and see an elegant whitetail and her growing fawn standing silently and still under the berry tree.  She reaches down to the grass and gets some breakfast - berries? grass?  Lilly still hadn't asked to be let out by 7:15 when I left to meet Andy.

Prednisone, day 181, 10 mg., day 2/5.   My shoulders are a little sore this morning, full ROM but a little sore when moving.  Prednisone at 5:00.  Cottage cheese w/ blueberries at 5:30.   Morning meds at 7:05 before leaving to follow Andy to West Allis where the transmission on his Infiniti will be replaced.

My Heart Leaps Up  William Wordsworth  1770 – 1850

My heart leaps up when I behold 

   A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man; 

So be it when I shall grow old, 

     Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man; 

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

I thought of this poem this morning while driving to meet Andy for our caravan down to the transmission shop.  I thought too of Wordsworth's definition of poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion recollected in tranquillity.  I noticed, as I have so often this autumn, how spectacularly gorgeous the sky was, loaded with voluminous white and blue and gray clouds with the pretty cerulean blue sky filling the spaces between the clouds.  When I reached Brown Deer Road the rising sun over Lake Michigan peeked through a hole in some of the clouds creating bright coronas around the edges of the clouds.  It almost took my breath away and I tried to snap a photo of it with my phone.  By the time I was able to position my phone, the moment was gone but 'the memory lingered on.' (lyric from The Song is Ended by Irving Berlin. More on Irving Berlin below.)

Emily Dickinson's Homage to Trump.  Dickinson's poems don't have titles, except perhaps their first lines.  One of her poems is often referred to by its first line: A narrow Fellow in the Grass.  It could be titled: An Homage to Trump.

A narrow Fellow in the Grass

Occasionally rides -

You may have met him? Did you not

His notice instant is -

    The Grass divides as with a Comb,

    A spotted Shaft is seen,

    And then it closes at your Feet

    And opens further on -

He likes a Boggy Acre -  

A Floor too cool for Corn -

But when a Boy and Barefoot

I more than once at Noon

    Have passed I thought a Whip Lash

    Unbraiding in the Sun

    When stooping to secure it

    It wrinkled And was gone -

Several of Nature’s People

I know, and they know me

I feel for them a transport

Of Cordiality

    But never met this Fellow

    Attended or alone

    Without a tighter Breathing

    And Zero at the Bone.

First Anniversary minnow: I remember Kate Smith from my childhood, not a 'glamourpuss' but a full-bodied woman with a lovely voice.   I especially remember her singing God Bless America.  I've long thought it would be a better national anthem than The Star-Spangled Banner with its references to war, "the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air."  But I am noting this particular anniversary today because of its connection with Irving Berlin,(born Israel Beilin; Yiddish: ישראל ביילי)  It reminds me of his extraordinary contributions to American culture and life which reminds me in turn of what I wrote in 2018 after the Tree of Life murders:

I read that the Squirrel Hill terrorist wanted to "kill all Jews" even as he was wheeled into the ER at the hospital where the doctor and nurse who treated him were Jews.  In BadDreamLand, I had a vision of the murderer's wish being granted.  Suddenly his treating physician and attending nurse disappeared. Then all the Jewish doctors and nurses that treat and have treated me and my family through a long life disappeared.  Poof.  Then I recalled Itzhak Perlman on the Steven Colbert Show playing "Someone to Watch Over Me" and Itzhak disappeared as did the song's composer, Jacob Gershvin a/k/a George Gershwin,  and the beautiful song itself, along with Rhapsody in Blue and everything else that Jacob/George created to share with the world.  Poof.  Then I thought of Israel Beilin a/k/a Irving Berlin vanishing along with his gifts to the world: God Bless America, White Christmas, and hundreds of others.  Gone.  Then I hallucinated Robert Allen Zimmerman a/k/a Bob Dylan disappearing with Blowing in the Wind, The Times They Are A-Changin', and so much more.  Then Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Billy Joel, Piano Man, My Life, Uptown Girl, Carole Joan Klein a/k/a Carole King,  So Far Away, It's Too Late, Tapestry,  Neil Diamond, Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, Sweet Caroline, Barbra Streisand, People, The Way We Were. All gone the disappeared Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler. Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein, Benny Goodman, Ziggy Elman, Herbie Mann, so many musicians, so much soul expanding music - gone. And all those humorists  who brought so much joy and laughter to my life - Gilda Radner, Gene Wilder, the Marx brothers, Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Larry David, Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, Jack Benny, Mort Sahl,  Lenny Bruce, George Burns, and Al Franklin - so many humorists, so many smiles, chuckles, and belly laughs, taken away - poof.  And all those great scientists, like Abram Saperstein, a/k/a Albert Sabin who gave us oral polio vaccine, Jonas Salk and his polio vaccine, Paul Ehlich who developed the first cure for the worldwide scourge of syphilis and who helped cure diphtheria, Albert Einstein who showed us E=mc squared, relativity and black holes.  Then my frightening dream became even more nightmarish when I saw disappearing all the many Jews who have personally enriched my life with their friendship, those I worked with and those who share and have shared their homes and their hearts with me and my family, who have lovingly shared their wise counsel with me when I most needed it, who have shared their marriages, funerals, britot, b'nai and b'not mitzah, Shabbat services and seders and who have accepted me despite my faults and failings, my spiritual and emotional mishpuchah.  As my nightmare took all of them away from me I couldn't take it any more and woke up trembling and repeating don't go, don't go.  And though I'm not a pray-er, I found myself saying Please God - no, never.

Second Anniversary minnow.   I read Catch-22 sometime between 1961 when it was published and 1965 when I was in Vietnam, remembering it.  I was sitting in the Officers' Mess in an old French Army building.  It was nearing Christmas and I had walked into the mess hall alone to get a late lunch and found the head chaplain of the 1st Marine Air Wing, an O-6 Navy captain, hanging ornaments on an artificial Christmas tree.  He was an Episcopalian priest and he sang loudly to himself as he decorated the tree:  Christmas is a'coming and the goose is getting fat, please to put a penny in the old man's hat.  If you haven't got a penny then a ha'penny will do.  If you haven't got a ha'penny then God bless you.  I had been "in country" for 5 months by then, sensed that no good would come of the war and, as I sat alone eating my late lunch and listening to the chaplain belting out his carol, I thought of Catch-22.  I still vividly remember thinking that, when I read it, I believed the novel was fiction, but now I know it to be true, or at least based on fact.  All the crazy shit that Yossarian experienced in WWII, the absurdities and inanities,(Major Major Major Major, Milo Minderbinder, Chaplain Tappman)  that kind of stuff really happens!  Some memories stay with us forever.  The song is over, but the memory lingers on.

"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways", Yossarian continued, hurtling over her objections. "There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about – a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did he ever create pain? … Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! [to warn us of danger] Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn't He? … What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. …"

Last Anniversary minnow.  Is there something ironic or even perverse about a French national leader urging a rejection of Nationalism under L'Arc de Triomphe celebrating Napoleon's many victories?  Allons enfants de la patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé ! . . .  Aux armes, citoyens ! Formez vos bataillons ! Marchons ! Marchons ! Qu'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons ! . . . Let's go children of the fatherland,  The day of glory has arrived! Grab your weapons, citizens!  Form your battalions!  Let us march! Let us march!  May impure blood Water our fields!

11/10/24

 Sunday, November 10, 2024

D+5

1775 U. S. Marine Corps was founded at Tun Tavern, Philadelphia

1940 Walt Disney began serving as an informer for the Los Angeles office of the FBI; his job was to report back information on Hollywood subversives.

1951 1st long-distance telephone call without operator assistance

1954 "Marine Corps War Memorial" was unveiled in Arlington County, Virginia, dedicated to US Marines who died in defense of the US since 1775 (inspired by the 1945 Iwo Jima photo of servicemen raising the US flag)

1969 "Sesame Street" premiered on PBS TV

2012 The final US presidential election results were declared after Barack Obama won Florida to defeat Mitt Romney 332-206 in Electoral College votes

These Marines escorting the birthday cake in different circumstances would be escorting the casket of another Marine.

In bed by 8:45, awake and up by 4:35 from an unpleasant dream of law school days.  Too much watching the oral history interviews?  I let Lilly out at 5:40.

Prednisone, day 180, 10 mg., day 1/5.  Prednisone at 5:30 followed by two "Brogies" at 5:40.  Morning meds at noon.

The bait bucket. (1) The endless theorizing and analyzing of the presidential election reminds me that so much of "news" is wasted time, twaddle, and drivel.  

(2)  The news in the Times that the burning of fossil fuels - coal, oil, gas - has increased substantially in the last year, since the last international climate conference when the major nations pledged to reduce emissions.  Now we have Trump in office with his major priority being "drill, drill, drill."   Moral Man and Immoral Society.

(3)  I'm struck by how perverse Trump's victory is.  Some voters wouldn't vote for Harris because of Biden's unconditional support of Israel's war on Gaza, but Trump is even more supportive of Israel and Netanyahu than Biden.  Some voters wouldn't vote for Harris because of the inflation under Biden but Trump's announced policies of massive tariffs and more tax cuts are much more inflationary than Biden's/Harris's.  Some voters wouldn't vote for Harris because of the Democrats' domination by elites, but Trump is surrounded by the likes of Elon Musk and other multi-billionaires who are about as elite as elite can be.  Some voters voted for Trump because of his tough-on-China policies, but China holds a massive amount of American debt and could create havoc with our economy and financial system by weaponizing it.

(4) “Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.

They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares anymore what particular knot they used in the binding?”

― A.R. Moxon

(5)  I've been thinking quite a bit about the MULS Oral History interviews.  I wonder what selection principles were at work for choosing the persons to be interviewed, especially w/r/t me.  I was struck by how both Jim Ghiardi and I provided quite a historical overview of our respective periods as students at the school in the early 40s and the late 60s.  I was a bit surprised at the similarities in our experiences.  We were both veterans when we started teaching.  We both had heavy teaching loads.  We were both inbred, MULS grads.  Both of our own classes were decimated by the draft.  Watching and listening to him also reminded me of what a domineering presence he was in the school, how he lorded it over everyone, including other faculty members and over Bob Boden, the dean he had installed by O'Hara Hall.  I noted that he was "secretary of the faculty" or essentially acting dean for 8 or 9 months between Judge Swietlik and Reynolds Seitz.  I was disappointed that Dan Blinka, who conducted the interview, asked no questions about the ousting of Dean Seitz and his replacement by Bob Boden.   On the other hand, I was struck by Ghiardi's description of the law school culture between the post-WWII era and my Vietnam era.  His description of the law school's Christmas parties for faculty, staff, and students, and of the law school chorus, which was led for a time by Ray Aiken, the law school's musicals and skits.  Clearly, the atmosphere in the school in those days was dramatically warmer, better, and more fraternal and collegial than it was during my law school days and even my early days on the faculty.  What happened?  Why did morale go so downhill?  I wonder how much of that was attributable to Ghiardi himself, including but not limited to the ouster of Dean Seitz and the firing of Bob O'Connell both of which were undoubtedly prompted by Ghiardi. I was struck by how self-satisfied FD  FG and JW seemed, almost smug, compared to, e.g., Deb Beck and even Joan Kessler.  I wonder if a woman can come off as self-satisfied as FD, FG, and JW.  I looked like a lurp compared to any or all of them.

(6) Today is the 249th Marine Corps Birthday, a time for Birthday Balls and Birthday Dinners (or "messes") at Marine Corps stations around the world.  I don't know for certain but I don't think any of the Marines' sister services celebrate their foundings as the Marines do.  It's truly a big deal for Marines, as the photo I printed on the first page of these notes suggests.  I have deeply mixed feelings about my time in the Marines.  I am embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty about my service in Vietnam.  I am embarrassed by how stupid, naive, ignorant, and gullible I was in those days.  I am ashamed and guilty for what we did over there, the loss of millions of lives, the terrorizing and crippling of so many others.  What does it say of my moral and ethical sensitivity that I so casually and obediently participated in that lethal endeavor?  That I so casually made Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, and Dean Rusk my moral and ethical decisionmakers? What does it say of my moral and ethical education, more concerned about masturbation and premarital sex, 'impure thoughts and impure deeds' than with capitalism, imperialism, and nationalism?  Pray, pay, and obey - what was expected of good Catholics, and the "obey" part covered a lot of sinful territory.  On the other hand, I spent a total of 8 years in the military, 4 in the Naval Reserve as a midshipman, and 4 on active duty as a Marine officer.  I worked with many good men during those years.  They were not born or natural killers.  They were very much like me: trusting, patriotic, loyal, good citizens doing their duty.  We, like millions of our neighbors, were all caught up in our sense of duty, patriotism, and good citizenship and we deferred to our leaders.  Good soldiers, good Marines, troopers.  I think of Ron Kendall, Ray Mendoza, Bob Hillary, Pete Peterson, 'Moon' Mullen, Pete Powell, Frank Peterson, Phil Swaim, and many others, fellow Marines, good people.  I think of Larry Anderson, to whom I sent a "Happy birthday, Jarhead" greeting today.  I wonder what role I may have played in his joining the Marine Corps after graduation from MULS.  Happy birthday to all of them. 

(7) I looked at a couple of YouTube videos on gouache painting this afternoon.  I was into gouache for a while but now I can't remember what I painted or how.  I have quite a good supply of gouache and have some interest in using it but can't come up with a project to start with.  I should just take a piece of watercolor paper, dip a brush in some gouache, and see what happens.

Anniversaries thoughts.  Enough about the Marines and no comment on Walt Disney, informer, other than to wonder who were considered "subversives" in those days, recalling the "Red Scsre" and Joe McCarthy after the war.

Regarding the 'direct dial' long-distance phone calls becoming possible in 1951, I know this was considered progress and indeed it was.  No more "one ringy dingy" human intermediary between the caller and the callee.  But I also recall that my Aunt Monica supported herself and her three children on her wages as a long-distance operator and that Geri's mother was an Illinois Bell operator as was my good friend Larry Stack's mother.  With direct dialing many women lost their employment and source of income.  Progress comes at a cost.

Regarding Sesame Street, there was little good news in 1969, but Sesame Street was at or near the top of the list.

And regarding the 2012 presidential election, it's just hard to believe that there was a time not all that long ago when Florida was a Blue State.  There was a time when South Dakota sent guys like George McGovern and Tom Daschle to the Senate, Iowa sent Tom Harkin there, and Texas elected Ann Richards as governor.  Now we get the likes of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis from Florida, Kristi Noem from South Dakota, and from Texas we have Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and Ken Paxton.  How low can we go? 

11/9/24

 Saturday, November 9, 2024

D+4

1862 US General Ulysses S. Grant issued orders to bar Jews from serving under him

1989 East Berlin opened its borders at Checkpoint Charlie when thousands arrive after a bureaucratic error announced that restrictions on travel to the West had been lifted

2018 Amid Californian forest fires US President Donald Trump accused state forest management of "gross mismanagement", threatened to withhold funding

In bed at 10 after watching Bill Maher, John Heilman & Sarah Isgur, awake at 5:54 and up at 6 to let Lilly out.   

Prednisone, day 179, 15 mg., day 5/5.   Prednisone at 6:15.  Three slices of toasted Dave's Bread at 8:30 followed by morning meds.

Postmortems.  I've read several postmortems about Trump's victory and Harris's defeat in the presidential election and avoided much more.  I am naturally drawn to critiques that primarily blame Biden because they confirm my own anti-Biden bias.  Biden should not have run for reelection.  It was stupid and vain and selfish to do so  He froze out all the potential Democratic candidates like Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsome, and others.  He prevented enlightening and chastening and strengthening primary fights.  He compounded his sin by anointing Kamala Harris, who was  (1) so weak a candidate in the 2020 primaries that she was the first the drop out, even before the Iowa caucuses, and (2) a part of the deeply unpopular Biden administration.  She was tied to Biden more than any other Democrat outside his administration was.  He forced on the Democratic Party a candidate who was both (1) a woman and (2) a Black, making the uphill climb from the Biden headwinds (inflation, immigration, etc.) even steeper.  He tied Harris to his own complicity in what I suspect will eventually be adjudged genocide in Gaza.

I also pin the blame on Obama and the Clintons, each of whom has been more identified with the suburban liberal wing, the 'limousine liberals' than with blue-collar laboring people.  Bill Clinton attended Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale Law.  Hilary attended Wellesley and Yale Law.  Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA which devastated many American workers.  Barack Obama graduated from Columbia and Harvard Law.  He chose Tim Geithner as his Treasury Secretary and bailed out the big banks and the entire financial industry after the financial crisis of 2007-2008.  JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley and their executives, traders, and money manipulators made out like champs while millions of middle-class Americans lost their homes and much more.  In 2016, here's Barack Obama, describing to Bloomberg Businessweek his affinity for the private sector: “Just to bring things full circle about innovation — the conversations I have with Silicon Valley and with venture capital pull together my interests in science and organization in a way I find really satisfying.”  Are we to believe Democrats like this are really friends to the working class, to blue-collar workers, to those who shower after coming from work instead of before going off to work?  Should Larry Lunchbucket and Betty Babushka believe that?

It would be simplistic and reductionist and completely misleading to argue that Trump won the election because of the Clintons and NAFTA and Obama and the Wall Street bailout.  JFK: "Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan."  Many factors have contributed to Trump's rise and the Democrats' descent, their "shellacking" in Obama's 2020 midterm comment.  The Democratic Party now represents people like me and my family and friends, liberal suburbanites, not 'limousine liberals' but still people who shower before work, not after.  And it doesn't even represent people like me really.  I hated how Obama, Geithner, and Larry Summers handled the financial crisis.  I ranted about it regularly in comments to articles in the Washington Post.  Bill Clinton gives me the creeps and I"m no fan of Hilary either.  I'm represented by no major party.  Is anyone?  No party represents 'the little guy' anymore.  No party represents people like my sister 'the cleaning lady', my mother the waitress and factory worker, or my father the factory maintenance man.  We all know the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.  And 'the best government money can buy.'

11/8/24

 Friday, November 8, 2024

D+3

1923 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party staged the "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich, Germany

2014 President Obama authorised the deployment of 1,500 additional troops to help train and advise Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State militants

2018 CNN correspondent Jim Acosta's White House clearance was revoked after continuing to question President Donald Trump while an intern tried to wrestle the microphone from him

In bed by 9:15, awake at 2:48, and up at 3:13.    

Prednisone, day 178, 5 mg., day 4/5.   Prednisone at  4:30 with some soda bread.  Morning meds and Trulicity injection at 5:45.

Sedated?  I'm feeling that way today.  Not depressed, not morose, not beside myself, just calm.  I think it's because I expected Trump to win.  That expectation was consistent with my pessimistic nature, my hopelessness about American society and culture, about human nature, about our species made 'in the likeness of God,'  about Nieburh's Moral Man and Immoral Society, but at bottom, it's chickenshit, protecting myself from disappointment when the dreaded event occurs.  The news today reveals that Elon Musk was on Trump's call with Ukraine's Volododyr Zelenski and that Biden has authorized American miliary contractors to work in Ukraine.  We are going to be hit with a firehose of frightening news day after day now.  God only knows the nasty stuff that will occur once he's in office and crimially immunized by John Roberts and his cronies.  Why am I so calm?

MULS ORAL HISTORY.  I finished watching Jim Ghiardi's interview by Dan Blinka and earlier watched Frank Daily's, Frank Gimbel's, Mandy Stellman's, and Olivia Brown's.  I wondered how and why I was invited to be interviewed.  I felt a bit of a chill watching Jim Ghiardi, remembering his imperiousness, his hegemony during the Boden years, wondering if he was the same during the Seitz years, remembering his selfishness.  I felt a different kind of chill listering to Olivia Brown sing the praises of PKR in the classroom and in the part-time program, remembering his connivings with Bonnie T. and Jeff whatsisname and its impact on GAC, his betrayal of me with MKM.  I got a kick out of Frank Gimbel calling MULS "a vocational school," repeating a frequent charge against the school, especially as compared with UWLS.  I also got a kick out of Joan Kessler's description of the law school to which she transferred from UW Law.  She reminded me of Jim Ghiardi's (and perhaps Ray Aiken's) practice of having a secretary show up at the classroom door to take attendance at each class.

Family health report.  I'm doing better and Geri's doing worse.  Her leg is giving her quite a bit of pain.  This is worrisome. 

Today's FB post:  This is a copy of a post from May 25, 2020.  On my last visit to our national cemetery and the VA Medical Center, I found that my favorite tree had been removed.  I'm sure it wasn't literally 'chopped down,' but it was taken down and is gone.  It's destruction now seems somehow symbolic to me.

A photo of my favorite tree at Wood National Cemetery in Milwaukee.  It's old and gnarled and shades a few of the more than 36,000 veterans buried there.  I usually visit the cemetery every time I visit one of the clinics at the Zablocki VA Medical Center that care for me and more than 64,000 other veterans every year.  For decades I drove past the National Cemetery on I 94 heading to or from Madison or some other westerly destination.  Now I stop in and visit, taking in its beauty and its peacefulness. Many of those buried here lived in the Milwaukee Soldiers Home next to it, authorized by Abraham Lincoln shortly before his assassination to provide care for Civil War veterans.  Thankfully, after falling to near ruin, the Soldiers Home and its supporting facilities are being restored to provide housing for veterans who need help.

     I never visit Wood, or Zablocki, or the grounds of the Soldiers Home without feeling some emotion, mostly gratitude and a sense of kinship with the 'motley crew' who comprise the other visitors, temporary at Zablocki and permanent at Wood.  I'm always conscious of the fact that each of us is special because none of us is special.  The medical caregivers at Zablocki don't ask what branch of military service we were in, whether we were officer or enlisted, or whether we served in a war zone.  They know we all served somewhere sometime, as ordered.  Each headstone in Wood is the same size and material, regardless of the veteran's rank or when or where he or she served.  They remind the few visitors who come that each is special because none is special.  They almost inevitably bring to mind the adage found on the walls of VFW posts everywhere: All gave some, some gave all.

     I still wear on a chain around my old neck the dog tags I wore in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966.  Not because I'm a militarist since quite the opposite is true.  But because they remind me of my abiding kinship with all those vets at Zablocki and all those vets buried at Wood and all who have served and who serve now.  And they remind me of our right to expect more of our national leadership than what we have.

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, the Beer Hall Putsch - Hitler's January 6th.

Second, Obama's Afghanistan surge - not learnng from Vietnam and Iraq.  

Third, Trump pulling Jim Acosta's White House press pass - a sign of things to come.

11/7/24

 Thursday, November 7, 2024

D+2

1876 President Rutherford B. Hayes and challenger Samuel J. Tilden claimed presidential victory as Tilden (D) won the popular vote but Electoral College votes were disputed with Hayes (R)

1972 Incumbent President Richard Nixon was re-elected, defeating Democrat candidate George McGovern in a landslide by winning 49 states

In bed at 10:30, awake and up at 5:40 from a pleasant dream of visit a pleasant dream of visiting with Ed Felsenthal's large family at their cottage on a lake Up North somewhere.  It was clearly a dream because he had a couple of sisters, instead of only 6 brothers as was true in life.  Perhaps my brain was mixing up his birth family and his family of 5 daughters with Helen.  I recall visiting him in flight training at Pensacola, FL in 1964, when their eldest Mary Fran was an infant.  Such a good friend for so many years.  I miss him and burn a candle in his memory this early morning.  In this world of too many unpleasant dreams, Ed gave me a good one.  . . . Let Lilly out at 5:55.

By 7 a.m. the sun has risen just above the rooftops of our neighbors.  The sky is clear, a lovely autumn morning   The chickadees are arriving as usual, one after another, like jets returning to their home aircraft carrier.  They remind me of how starlings coming to rest on a lawn remind me of A-4 Skyhawks landing.  All the birds remind me of how mind-bogglingly capable they are: capable of flight, capable of stopping on a dime, capable of surviving brutal Wisconsin winters, capable of building wondrously engineered nests, . . .

At 11:25, I see good neighbor John out for a walk with his walker.  God bless him. 

Shortly after 2 p.m., our dead leaves are sucked up by the village;s mobile power snorkle.  Ssswwooosh!  I think back to our years outside Saukville on our 3.4 acre lot covered with leaves every Fall.  I burned them in our back yard burn pit when the weather permitted after blowing them into big piles with the John Deere tractor /mower.  What a job.  Now our lawn care contractor sucks up our leaves with his tractor which collects in an a big tank on the back of the tractor to be deposited on the side of the street for the village snorkle.  

Prednisone, day 177, 15 mg., day 3/5.   Prednisone at 6, followed by some doughnuts and morning meds.

Family matters.  I picked up Andy at the Goodyear Store at 8 a.m., and took him to Walgreens for some medicine for Anh, who is down with the respiratory malaise that had Andy down, then Drew with pneumonia, and now Lizzie but no pneumonia.  I will pick up Lizzie at Nicolet at 3:15 this afternoon and get Andy's keys and pay for the wheel alignment at Goodyear.  Peter has been accepted at MSOE and Iowa State and is waiting to hear from Purdue and Notre Dame.  At 4:15 I picked up Drew and drove him to Nicolet then drove to Goodyear to get key to Andy's Lexus and pay the bill.  At 5:30, I picked up Andy and took him up to Goodyear to get the car.  Busy day!  Being useful for a change!

Blame Biden: Harris was probably doomed from the jump.  by Tyler Austin Harper in yesterday's The Atlantic.  Excerpts:

The reason is that she had an 81-year-old albatross hanging around her neck: Joe Biden. When Biden got into the 2020 presidential race, he said he was motivated to defeat the man who blamed “both sides” for a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Five years later, Biden’s inability to see his own limitations handed that same man the White House once more. Nobody bears more responsibility for Trump’s reascension to the presidency than the current president. This failure lies at his feet.

Biden was supposed to be a one-term candidate. During his 2019 campaign, he heavily signaled that he would not run again if he won. “He is going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection,” one of his advisers declared. Biden himself promised to be a “transition” candidate, holding off Trump for four years while making room for a fresh Democratic challenger in 2024. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not anything else,” he said at a Michigan campaign event with Governor Gretchen Whitmer, one of those promising younger Democrats Biden was ostensibly making room for.

Of course, that’s not what happened. Scranton Joe, supposed paragon of aw-shucks decency, ultimately wouldn’t relinquish his power. He decided in the spring of 2023 to run for reelection despite no shortage of warning signs, including a basement-level approval rating, flashing bright red. He also ignored the will of the voters. As early as 2022, an overwhelming percentage of Democratic voters said they preferred a candidate other than Biden, and support for an alternative candidate persisted even as the president threw his hat back in the ring. This past February, one poll found that 86 percent of Americans and 73 percent of Democrats believed Biden was too old to serve another term, and another revealed that only a third of Americans believed that he was mentally fit for four more years.

The idea that Americans would vote for a man who they overwhelmingly thought was too old and cognitively infirm stretched reason to its breaking point. And yet Biden and his enablers in the Democratic Party doubled down on magical thinking. This was a species of madness worthy of King Lear shaking his fist before the encroaching storm. And like Lear, what the current president ultimately raged against was nature itself—that final frailty, aging and decline—as he stubbornly clung to the delusion that he could outrun human biology. 

Nature won, as it always does. After flouting the will of his own voters, after his party did everything in its power to clear the runway for his reelection bid, and after benefiting from an army of commentators and superfans who insisted that mounting video evidence of his mental slips were “cheap fakes,” Biden crashed and burned at the debate in June. He hung on for another month, fueling the flames of scandal and intraparty revolt and robbing his successor of badly needed time to begin campaigning. And yet when he finally did stand down, Biden World immediately spun up the just-so story that the president is an honorable man who stepped aside for the good of the country.

He did not stand down soon enough. The cake was baked. The powers that be decided the hour was too late for a primary or contested convention, so an unpopular president was replaced with an unpopular vice president, who wasted no time in reminding America why her own presidential bid failed just a few years before. The limitations of Harris’s campaign are now laid bare for all to see, but her grave was dug before she ever took the podium at the Democratic National Convention.

Harris could not distance herself from Biden’s unpopular record on inflation and the southern border. She could not distance herself from his unpopular foreign policy in the Middle East. She could not break from him while she simultaneously served as his deputy. And she could not tell an obvious truth—that the sitting U.S. president is not fit for office—when asked by reporters, and so she was forced into Orwellian contortions. If the worst comes to pass, if the next four years are as bad as Biden warned, if the country—teetering before the abyss—stumbles toward that last precipice, it will have been American democracy’s self-styled savior who helped push it, tumbling end over end, into the dark. 

 I agree with the writer although I am less inclined to find fault with Harris and more inclined to find fault with Biden.  I've distrusted and disliked Joe Biden for years, at least since his misfeasance as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings in 1991.  Barack Obama is apocryphally reputed to have said "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up."  Franklin Delano Roosevelt said of Army General Douglas MacArthur "“Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.”  Joe Biden is a man who has long overestimated himself.  He was a mediocre student in college (like me) and worse than mediocre at Syracuse Law School.  He took a job as a public defender probably because he couldn't land a more lucrative and prestigious position, but he claimed it was because of his devotion to the cause of the underprivileged.  He's an ordinary guy who aspired to positions of extraordinary power and prestige.  He's always been power-hungry, envious, and inclined to engage in deceitful self-puffery.  He willingly put the nation at risk when he greedily chose to run for reelection at age 81.  He'll be 82 in two weeks.  He has placed the nation in great peril.  He has laid low his own political party.  It was a foolish, selfish act by a foolish, selfish man.  His legacy will be all the damage Trump does in his second term.  “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones."  So be it.

What's with guys and their cowboy hats?  On one of my visits to Italy, while touring ancient Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues, I often thought how curious it was that I was instructed by the churches to keep my head uncovered while inside and instructed by the synagogues to keep my head covered while inside.  I knew it was a cultural thing with no inherent significance,  I also remember how bothered my father was whenever seeing men wearing baseball caps indoors, especially if the caps were worn bill-backward.  In fact, I feel a little discomfiture about similar behavior, perhaps because we Marines always had to remain "uncovered" when indoors.  A matter of custom codified into regulation.  Something that still bugs me, however, is guys who insist on wearing their cowboy hats indoors.  I suspect it's a signal that 'my dick is bigger than your dick.'  Or perhaps a visual variation of the lines about Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby: ""Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final. Just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are."  The fellow in the photos was identified as Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist and I was surprised that although he must have considered the cowboy hat de rigeur or perhaps even a matter of personal privilege, he wasn't wearing cowboy boots.  Indeed he wore business shoes of some sort with horizontally-striped socks.  Boots, not necessary on a news show set but cowboy hat, de rigeur.  Wha'supwidat?

Anniversaries.  The election of 1876 led to the Great Compromise of 1877 in which Hayes and the Republicans sold out all the Blacks in the South by agreeing to withdraw federal troops from the last two states former Confederate where they were stationed during Reconstruction in order to put Hayes in the White House.

At least as long ago as the 1972 election, it was obvious that America was not capable of electing a very liberal presidential candidate.  McGovern ran on ending the Vietnam War.  He won only Massachusetts.  Nixon got 61% of the popular vote.  McGovern had a grandchild or nephew at Shorewood High School and we used to see him on occasion at school events.

11/6/24

 Wednesday, November 6, 2024

The night is far gone; the day is at hand.— Romans 13:12

Don't underestimate Joe's abililty to fuck things up.  Barack Obama

2024 AP called Trump the winner

In bed at 10:30, up at 3:45. I let Lilly out at 5:55.    

Prednisone, day 176, 15 mg., day 2/5.   Prednisone around 5 a.m.  Morning meds at 6:10.

A darting fear—a pomp—a tear—

A waking on a morn

To find that what one waked for,

Inhales the different dawn.

  

The Second Coming

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? 

Further your affiant saith not.                    -30-

11/5/24

 Tuesday, November 5, 2024

1967 US troops conquered Loc Ninh South Vietnam

1968  Richard Nixon was elected President of the United States, defeating Democrat  Hubert Humphrey and Independent George Wallace

1996 Bill Clinton was re-elected President of the United States, defeating Republican candidate Bob Dole

2019 Actress Emma Watson interviewed in Vogue magazine said she was happy to be single "I call it being self-partnered" launching a worldwide discussion on the term

2021 NFL Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers admitted in an interview he was unvaccinated and taking unapproved treatment after testing positive for COVID-19.

In bed before 9:30 CST, awake and up at 5:13 from a very unpleasant dream of law practice days and an argument with TSJ, a bad way to start the day.  It's another of Ishmail's 'damp, drizzly November in my soul." 

Prednisone, day 175, 15mg., day 1/5.   Prednisone at 5:28.  Morning meds and two slices of Dave's Bread w/ preserves at 7:10,  Having taken 20 mg. yesterday afternoon, the morning pains in my shoulders and hips have disappeared.  From what Dr. Ryzka said to me yesterday, it looks like I could remain on prednisone for a year, perhaps a year and a half.  On November 13th, I will have completed 6 months of daily prednisone.  I can't kvetch about the med when I imagine what my life would have been without it.  I wrote a long letter to Dr. Chatt about my chronic pain condition on Geri's 80th birthday, April 18th, and concluded it:

These conditions and challenges have arisen over the last 4 months and they have turned my life upside down.  When I am hoping to know is whether they are simply the result of age-related, wear-and-tear osteoarthritis treatable with OTC NSAIDS and physical therapy, or whether some other factor is causative.  Ultimately, I’m wondering whether this is what the rest of my life will look like.

That last line is not so subtle.  I was thinking about suicide every day during that period, or more accurately, every night as I lay awake on the recliner, my shoulders and arms useless for anything other than bearing pain. 

Two years ago today:

Donald Hall: Essays After Eighty

Death: "It is sensible of me to be aware that I will die one of these days.  I will not pass away.  Every day millions of people pass away -in obituaries, death notices, cards of consolation,-mails to the corpse's friends -but people don't die.  Sometimes they rest in peace, quit this world, go the way of all flesh, depart, give up the ghost, breathe a last breath . . . . At some point in my seventies, death stopped being interesting. . . In my eighties, my days have narrowed as they must. . . I try not to break my neck, I write letters, I take naps, I write essays. . . My goal in life is to make it to the bathroom."

Anniversaries:  Loc Ninh, 80 miles northwest of Saigon, site of two major battles during the Vietnam War.  The first, in 1967, a PAVN rehearsal for the Tet Offensive, was 'won' by the U.S.  The second, in April 1973, was won by the PAVN.  Many Americans and Vietnamese were killed in both battles.  Today, if I were to stand on the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Water Street and ask 100 passersby what or where Loc Ninh is, not a one would have a clue.  Today, Loc Ninh may be home to manufacturing plants where Vietnamese workers earn a living making tee shirts or running shoes for American markets.  Vietnam won the war not only against the American military but also against American workers thanks to the capitalists who run America's economy and America's government.  Betraying our military is called treason.  Betraying our workers is called good business.

The 1968 presidential election was won by Nixon with 43.4% of the popular vote, Humphrey garnering 42.7% and George Wallace and Curtis LeMay 13.5%.  With less than a single percentage point separating them in the popular vote, Nixon received 301 Electoral College votes to Humphrey's 191 and Wallace's 46.  Nixon carried 32 states, Humphrey only 13 plus the District of Columbia.  Wallace carried 5, not surprisingly Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, and Arkansas.  Wallace's running mate Curtis LeMay led the firebombing raids on Japanese cities in 1945.  

And the bombs would be incendiaries—M47 phosphorus bombs and M69 napalm cluster bombs—for which traditional Japanese homes of wood and bamboo, walled with paper screens and floored with rice straw mats, would be little more than tinder and kindling. “No matter how you slice it,” LeMay told himself, “you’re going to kill an awful lot of civilians. Thousands and thousands. But….We’re at war with Japan. We were attacked by Japan. Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have more Americans killed?”

To this day Operation Meetinghouse, the firebombing of Tokyo by 279 B-29s on the night of March 9-10, 1945, remains the single most destructive air raid in history. The Superfortresses flew single file over the city, dropping 2,000 tons of incendiaries, utterly destroying almost 16 square miles. More than a million people were left homeless and as many as 125,000 were wounded. Japanese authorities needed three weeks to clear away the bodies. How many burned to ashes in the inferno will never be known. Estimates range from 80,000 to over 200,000 dead—more than in the atomic blasts of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki—and almost all of them were women, children and the elderly. The Americans lost 14 bombers and 96 airmen.

“I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal,” LeMay reflected years later. “Fortunately, we were on the winning side….All war is immoral, and if you let it bother you, you’re not a good soldier.”

We need to remember our own history as we condemn Israel's history with Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

The Clinton-Dole election.  I voted for Clinton even though I never liked him and couldn't help liking Bob Dole.  I think of Clinton as a DINO though no one would ever accuse Dole in those days of being a RINO.  I blame what has happened to Milwaukee and similar industrial cities on Clinton and NAFTA but note that Dole voted in favor of NAFTA and was one of its strong supporters.  Comics, including SNL, used to have a lot of fun poking fun at Dole's referring to himself in the third person.  He was impersonated by Norm MacDonald and by Dan Akroyd.  

Emma Watson is a very famous actress but I think I've never seen any of her movies.  She was born in 1990, so she's almost 50 years younger than me.  She's happy with her life as a single person, or "self-partnered."  I've been other-partnered almost my entire adult life, since I was 17 actually.  I never really had an active 'single life' or 'dating life.'  There have been times when I have considered this a loss but on balance I'm persuaded that "partnering up" is the more satisfying way to navigate life.  For most of us, it's the only way to grow up, to get outside of ourselves, to learn of the need to accommodate people other than ourselves.   By "partnering up," I don't mean only marriage but rather any exclusive life-sharing relationship in which the wishes and welfare, idiosyncracies and even the faults of the partner are as important as one's own.  For those who are fortunate, a long-term partnering relationship will lead to a deepening experience of love, of appreciation of the goodness of one's partner. an ability to see the continuity of the child in the old person and the partner's saintliness, specialness, and unique value.  Seeing these qualities in our partner can also remind us those qualities may exist in other persons, including people we run into on the street or in the food market.  It may also get us to see some of those qualities in ourselves without falling prey to conceit.  I don't express my thoughts very well, but I'm persuaded that some goods in life grow only out of "other partnering" or long-term sharing relationships.  Some such relationships don't work out of course but at least people try.  With 'self-partnering,' it's a lost cause.  God was All-Wise in the Garden of Eden, looking at Adam bored and forlorn: "It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a companion suitable for him."  Most versions of Genesis say " a helper" rather than "a companion" but exegetes argue whether the original word implied subordination.  For most of human history of course, subordination of the helper has been the rule, rarely the exception.  The MAGA people would take us back to those days.  The main thrust of making America great again is reestablishing White male Christian hegemony.  Let's see what today's election brings.

Aaron Rodgers is into 'self-partnering.'  He is coming up on his 41st birthday in a few weeks and he's never been married or, so far as I know, in a presumably permanent or committed relationship.  It's one thing for a 'self-partnered' person to eschew a covid vaccination.  It's quite another thing for an 'other-partnered' person to do so, putting not only himself but also his or her partner at risk.  Notably, Rodgers put his teammates - players and coaches - at risk.  I can't see inside his heart or soul of course but I suspect he may be a pretty selfish guy.  Perhaps he would be less so if he were not 'self-partnered.'

I picked Lizzie up at Nicolet at 3:15.  What a mess!  Construction on the freeway, construction on Jean Nicolet Drive, and construction on the Nicolet parking lots.  It was a miracle that I got there on time - and at the right place.  I would have gone to the athletic area for the pickup which I'm used to, but (1) I couldn't exit the freeway at Good Hope because of ramp construction and (2) exiting at Silver Spring and going north on Jean Nicolet, I got shuttled to the main entrance, where she was.  Lucky me, lucky Lizzie! (It was raining.)

Then I went to the pet store and got a bag of kibble for Lilly and to Sendik's where I got some bananas, oatmeal for Geri, All Bran for me, and a bottle of Bogle Pinot Gris in case Geri gets despondent during the election reporting.  I told Andy that, after a year off the sauce following my last trip to the ER for a bladder "flare,", I may need a martini tonight or tomorrow if it looks like Orange Julius Caesar is crossing the Rubicon.