3/21/2025

 Friday, March 21, 2025

D+134/61

1947 President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to have "complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States"

1966 US Supreme Court reversed a Massachusetts ruling that "Fanny Hill" is obscene

1973 White House Counsel John Dean told President Richard Nixon, "There is a cancer growing on the Presidency"

In bed at 9:30 and awake at 3:15, up at 3:43 from a vivid dream of RJA, JDG, and myself, preparing for a gathering at which RJA would be honored, getting his suit altered, getting an expensive baseball mitt to present him as a gift, my sleeping neural pathways confusing RJA and his home in Delafiedwith JDG and his home in Whitefish Bay.  Not a nasty dream, but confused.

Prednisone, day 334; 4 mg., day 16/21; Kevzara, day 3/14; CGM, day 3/15; Trulicity, day 1/7.   2 mg. of prednisone at 4:45 a.m. and 7 p.m. Other meds at 6:40 a.m.   Trulicity injection at 6:40 a.m.    

Losing my marbles?  As I lay in bed before getting up, I wondered whether I am losing my marble posting yesterday's long rant about Trump and Musk on FB and copying it in a reply to JPG about her sunrise photos.    I wonder whether I ought to retire from life like a clam snapping shut its shell, or a hermit crab pulling back into its. What's the old adage about if you keep your mouth shut people may mistake you for a wise person, but open it and they'll know you're no, something like that.  My Dad's second (and third) wife Grace used to spontaneously break into song in her nursing home in North Pord, sometimes getting other residents to join in.  She would remind us that she "hadn't lost all of my marbles yet," and indeed she hadn't.  Neither have I but I'm on my way.  

From A Man For All Seasons:

William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”

Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”

William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”

Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”

Tom Homan on Fox News:

“I’m proud to be a part of this administration. We’re not stoppinf.  I son'r care what the judges think.  We're not stopping." 

 Justice Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States:

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal -- would bring terrible retribution.

Are we on our way to a true "constitutional crisis," in which the executive and judicial branches of government conflict in their edicts?  It seems almost unavoidable, or at least highly likely.  I suppose it doesn't really reach crisis stage until some matter, perhaps the deportation of the alleged Venezuelan gang members to some hellhole prison in El Salvador, reaches the Supreme which either enters its own order, or backs up a lower court order, and the president refuses to obey.  That is, when the Court asserts that it has the constitutional power and duty to act, and the President refuses to agree.  If the matter never reaches the Supreme Court, or if the Supremes bow down to Trump in one way or another, we will avoid the crisis pro tempore, until the next big conflict arises.   While mouthing "I always obey court orders,' Trump maintains his great admiration for his predecessor Andrew Jackson, who is famously though incorrectly reputed to have defied the Supreme Cour in response to its 1832 decision in Worcester v. Georgia, a case invalidating Georgia's right to remove Native Americans from their tribal lands.  Legend has it that Jackson said "Marshall has made his decision now let him enforce it."  The case had nothing to do with the Federal government's right to remove tribes, and there was no court order for Jackson to refuse to enforce.  Nonetheless, Trump probably loves the legend because of its 'fuck you,' 'kiss my ass,' and my-dick-is-bigger-than-your-dick quality.  It's hard for me not to believe that Trump is waiting for the right case to flex his political hegemony by defying a court order and getting away with it.  If that day comes, it's Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch' intrate.

CPM is an acronym for 'continuous passive movement,' and refers to a machine that bends a leg without the leg's owner having to exert any muscular effort.  Jim Reck used one for at least his first knee replacement many years ago, and perhaps for the second replacement as well.  In any event, here we are 9 weeks and 1 day since Geri's surgery and Dr. Graf has prescribed one for her.  He has told her again the "the window is closing' on avoiding a limp.  I'm wondering why he has waited so long before getting her on a CPM.

3/20/2025

 Thursday, March 20, 2025

D+133/60

1854 Anti-slavery activists within the Whig party opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act formed a new Republican Party; notable politicians who switched allegiance include Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison

2003 A US-led coalition launched a ground invasion of Iraq after an ultimatum for Saddam Hussein and his sons to leave Iraq expired

2018 Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with US President Donald Trump at the White House

2025  The first day of Spring

In bed at 9, awake and up at 5.    

Prednisone, day 333; 4 mg., day15/21; Kevzara, day 2/14; CGM, day 2/15.   2 mg. of prednisone at 5:15 a.m. and at 5 p.m.   Other meds at noon.     

Can this truly be happening before our eyes?  The latest "waste, fraud, and abuse" cancellation by the Trump-enabled Muskies is a program at Yale University to track and record the thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly removed from eastern Ukraine and resettled in Russia.  This is a part of the Republican version of the "cancel culture."   We are witnesses to a wide-scale/firehose/flood-the-zone assault on most (all?) of the values that we consider constitutive of the American character.  Right after Trump was elected  (133 days ago, notes the arithmomaniac), 'Christian'  nationalist Russell Vought, now the head of Trump's Office of Management and Budget, was interviewed by the anti-democrat (small and big "d") Tucker Carlson and said: 

The president has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers.

 He would "dismantle" what Steve Bannon would "deconstruct": the "administrative state," which is to say, the instrumentalities through which the federal government seeks "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."  Laws and policies to work toward these goals are never self-executing; they require agents and agencies.  The more complex and extensive the society and economy to which the laws and policies apply, the more complex and extensive must be the agencies to implement the laws and policies.  It is hard to imagine a society and economy more complex and extensive, and with more competing interests, than the United States; hence the need for an "administrative state."  If the world in which we live were simpler, our governmental structures could be simpler, as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries.  But it's not simple which became abundantly clear in the bloody 20th century with its world wars, Cold War, Great Depression, nuclear weapons, scientific and technological advances, computerization, and competing interests in every sector of life.  Take away the rules, take away the regulations and we will revert to the world that Thucydides described, where 'the powerful do what they will and the powerless suffer what they must. That is where Trump, Musk, and Vought are leading us.  

Who are the 'wesk' who are bing hurt by these guys?  We can start with those kidnapped Ukrainian children and their families whom Yale's defunded Humanitarian Research Lab was attempting to help. But add all the school children helped by school food programs and families helped by food stamps.  Add all the women and minorities aided by civil rights and other programs that could be considered DEI programs: Blacks, Browns, Asians, Indigenous/Native Americans, handicapped, LGBTQ, the poor, and the disabled.  In attacking Medicaid, they attack not only the poor but also the middle class so any of whose parents rely on Medicaid.  In attacking and disabling environmental regulations and regulators, they hurt all of us as well as our progeny.  Trump's attacks against the news media directly threaten the 1st Amendment freedoms of speech and of the press which harms all of us. In attacking judges, lawyers, and law firms, they undermine not only their safety from right-wing crackpots but the Rule of Law itself, as well as the constitutional rights to a fair trial, represented by counsel, the right not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process and equal protection of law.  The right not to be whisked off the streets or out of our homes by men with badges and guns and to be transported to other states or foreign countries without a court hearing before a judge who does not answer to the president but to the law.  In trying to decimate the federal workforce, 30% of which is comprised of military veterans, and firing 70,000 to 80,000 employees of the Veterans Administration, the Trumpkins and Muskies attack veterans and their families, doing violence to Abraham Lincoln's pledge "to care for him who shall have borne the battle," the motto of the VA.

Trump, Musk, Vought, and their myrmidons are dismantling and deconstructing not merely the bureaucracy and the administrative state, but the whole apparatus of democratic self-government, the rule of law, and indeed of law enforcement through knowledgable, expert agencies.  They claim to be doing the opposite, to be restoring democracy by taking power away from unelected bureaucrats and restoring it to elected officials, i.e., the legislature and unitary executive.  They know that the effect of their efforts will be to bring us back to a world in which the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.  The strong = the wealthy, the plutocrats.  The weak = the rest of us.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk comprise probably the most dangerous conspiracy ever to face the United States.  The combination of Trump's malice and political power and Musk's wealth put them in a position to defeat almost any Republican legislator who fails to act in accordance with their combined wills.  They are well positioned to simply buy media outlets that oppose them, as Musk did with Twitter.  We can only hope that Musk's political unpopularity will soon rub off on Trump, as it has on Tesla sales and Musk's net worth.  We can only hope.

I say nothing here of Trump's tariffs policies, which seem to hurt almost all of us and to benefit our enemies, notably China and Russia.  To make trade enemies of the U.S. Canada, Mexico, and the EU only benefits China and Russia.  To weaken or effectively destroy NATO only benefits Russia.  For all of America's faults 133 days ago, and there were many, we were in much better shape than we are now, as we are in Matt Groening's cartoon world, Living in Hell.

Springtime for Hitler  by Mel Brooks

CHORUS:

Germany was having trouble

What a sad, sad story

Needed a new leader to restore

Its former glory

Where, oh, where was he?

Where could that man be?

We looked around and then we found

The man for you and me

LEAD TENOR STORMTROOPER:

And now it's...

Springtime for Hitler and Germany

Deutschland is happy and gay!

We're marching to a faster pace

Look out, here comes the master race!

Springtime for Hitler and Germany

Rhineland's a fine land once more!

Springtime for Hitler and Germany

Watch out, Europe

We're going on tour!

Springtime for Hitler and Germany.. 

 Shopping day.  I went up to Wal-Mart this afternoon for some grocery items and birdseed.  Then to Costco to redeem our Citibank rebate and fill up with gas.

The Iliad.  I read the whole work many years ago and greatly enjoyed it.  I pulled my copy off the shelf the other day and moved it to the bathroom for Throne Room reading and really 'got into it' again in the first couple of pages, though I can't conceive of reading the whole work again because my eyesight is so poor, at least in terms of reading.  

 

3/19/2025

Wednesday, March 19,  2025

 D+132/59

1987 Televangelist Jim Bakker resigned after rape accusation by his secretary

2003 Airstrikes by an American and British-led coalition signaled the beginning of the Invasion of Iraq, without United Nations support and in defiance of world opinion

In bed at 9:30, awake and up at 4:15.  36°, high of 41°.  I lit a log in the fireplace, wondering how much longer it will be that I can start or end my days doing so before the temperaatures get too warm to sustain an updraft in the chimney.I also lit a Kitty candle, thinking can it really be that she's been gone for more than 3 years and that since losing her, I've lost Ed Felsenthal and Tom St. John.     

Prednisone, day 332; 4 mg., day 14/21; Kevzara, day 2/14; CGM, day 1/15.  2 mg. of prednisone at 4:35 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.  Other meds at 8:30 a.m.   

The Wind that Shakes the Barley.   Last night, we watched this 2006 film about the Irish War of Independence and its ensuing  Civil War.  The tension in the plot involves the O'Donovan brothers, Teddy and  Damien, members of the IRA who fight the British together during the War for Independence and then fight each other during the ensuing civil war over the Anglo-Irish treaty that divided Ireland.  It reminded me of my notion that wars never end, or I suppose I should say some wars never end.  I think of the 100 Year War in Palestine and the resumption yesterday of devastating aeriel warfare in Gaza.  I think of Russia's Catherine the Great conquering Crimea in 1783, Putin's annesation of Crimea in 2014, and Trump offering to officially recognize Crimea as part of Russia in his dealings with Putin carve up Ukraine.    I think of the American War Between the States in which, as Heather Cox Richardson reminds us, the North won the war and the South won the peace.  It still goes on today with Trump in the White House whose name seems even appropriate with his war on "DEI."  And we still have the unsettled issue of the unification of Ireland,  "26+6", which reared up again during "The Troubles", and again during the UK's negotiations over BREXIT, and simmers still in the hearts of millions of Irishmen.  

The film depicts, accurately I suspect, the brutality of the "Black and Tans,"  British viewers would, I suppose, dispute this, but among most Irish, the Black and Tans are remembered only as cruel thugs, and I suspect that view is largely accurate.  One of my earliest childhood memories  is of my Grandfather, Dennis Healy, 'in his cups' one day, visiting my mother, Kitty and me, in our little basement flat on Emerald Street, railing about 'the goddamn Black and Tans.'  That was in the 1940s, more than 25 years after the end of the Irish War of Independence.  'Boppa Denny' left Ireland in 1904, long before the invasion of the Blank and Tans after World War I.

The film also reflects the tension between bourgeois Irish nationalsts and their socialist brothers-in-arms.  For the bourgeois, the goal of the war of independence was simply to oust the British, gain self-rule, and continue life much as before the war.  For the socialists, the goal was to change the capitalist economy into a socialist one, with land reform and greater social and economic equality high on the list of goals.  One of the most powerful scenes in the film is in a Catholic church during a mass.  The priest is at his pulpit railing against the anti-Free Staters, i.e., the socialists.The scene reflects the power of the Church in Ireland until recent years, and its usual alliance with rich and powerful classes and against socialists and economic reformers.

The film is a blunt, honest takedown of British imperialism, settler colonialism, and 'Cruel Brittania.'  It is not hard to see why the government of Ireland and the Irish people side so readily with the Palestinians in their never-ending conflict with Israel.  It is also in a suble way, an indictment of bourgeois capitalism, reflected in a scene in which Damien O'Donnell, a doctor, visit a dying, malnourished little boy in a smallholder's cottage and in the scenes showing the elegant manorhouse of an English landlord.  The scene with the half-starved boy reminded me of the scene in The Year of Living Dangerously in which Linda Hunt, playing Billy Kwan, visited the ded (or dying?) child  he had been caring for, with Richard Strauss' exquiste Beim Schlafengehen as background music.

The film succeed as drama and not melodrama because of the excellent screenplay, direction, and acting, especially by Cillian Murphy playing Damien O"Donnel and by Padraic Delaney playing his brother, Teddy.  The film won the Palme d'Or in Cannes in 2007 and I can see why.

Arithmomania is a common subtype of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) characterized by an intense preoccupation with numbers and a compulsion to engage in repetitive counting behaviors.  Last night I counted the number of days since I started maintaining this jounal, or daily notebook - 972.  Then I counted the number of days I didn't make any entry in the compendium - 16.  Then I subtracted the latter from the former to arrive at the number of days I wrote daily notes - 956.  Why did I do this?  To see how close to the nuber 1,000 I am in writing daily notes.  OCD?  I suppose.  Since the day my fellow Americans elected Donald Trump as our president, I have counted the days - 132 as of today.  And now I'm counting the days since his inauguration -59.  OCD?  I suppose.  Hypergraphia, arithmomania, just waiting for schizophrenia.

I ran into a fellow Marine and Vietnam vet at Costco on today's shopping outing.  He was in for 4 years and in Nam in 66-67.  The two of usstruck up quite a conversation for about 20 minutes while his poor but patient wife went on with her shopping.  He was an explosives technician and was in the Corps for 4 years.  Both of us use the VA Medical Center in Milwaukee.  Our conversation had to end before I could ask him what he tought of Trump's plan to cut 70 or 80 thousand personnel from the VA.  I wasn't wearing either of my USMC baseball caps but he was so I said 'Semper fi, brother' and started the conversation.

FB exchange with Janine Geske today.  CDC: I wish you could publish a book of these Lake Michigan sunrise photos. You are our Ansel Adams🙂 I would stand in line to buy the book and brag to the many others in the line "I know the photographer!"😄 You've got me now taking iPhone photos of skies and cloud formations here in Bayside. Thanks (again!)  JPG: You are so funny. I just like to share the beauty I see in the morning (helping me to heal from everything happening in our country).  CDC:  I'm going through a very similar process, but I'm far from healed (actually nearly despondent.)

3/18/2025

 Tuesday, March 18, 2025

D+131/58

1940 Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler met at Brenner Pass, where the Italian dictator agrees to join Germany's impending war effort in the west

1942 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signsed Executive Order 9102, creating the War Relocation Authority, which was charged with overseeing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II

2005 Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is removed at the request of her husband

2014 Russia formally annexed Crimea, previously part of Ukraine

2018 First fatal accident involving an Uber self-driving car hitting a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona

The view out our front door at 7:08 a.m.  Sunrise was at 6:56.

In bed at 9, awake and up at 5!  40° outside, high of 47°.  I did a big load of laundry at 6 a.m.  I watched Morning Joe for some time despite my aversion to his incredible rudeness and bombast.  

Prednisone, day 338; 4 mg., day 13/21; Kevzara, day 1/14; CGM, day 1/ -----.  2 mg. of prednisone at 5:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.  Other meds at 6:45 a.m.  Kevzara injection at 11:40 a.m.    The continuous glucose sensor was applied at 12:40 p.m. I've been counting my days wrong for the Kevzara injections.  I inject the stuff every two weeks on a Tuesday.  Trulicity every week on a Friday.  The continuous glucose monitor is every 15  days. My right shoulder is slightly painful again, as it is every day, and it has me wondering again whether it's a return of the polymyalgia rheumatica, which seems unlikely, or osteoarthritis, or maybe rheumatoid arthritis, or frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) which Geri experienced several years ago.  

Bad Day at Black Rock is a 1955 movie starring Spencer Tracy and other stars and directed by John Sturges.   It is set in 1945 and is about anti-Japanese racism in a small, remote, California town.  One of the townsmen killed a Japanese farmer after Pearl Harbor and the whole town, including the sheriff, has lived with and covered up the crime for four years.  I watched the movie years ago and thought of it this morning while watching Morning Joe's discussion of the White House's defiance of Saturday's court order requiring a temporary halt to the deportation to El Salvador of alleged Venezuelan gang members, today's phone call between Trump and Putin to divvy up Ukraine, and yesterday's news of the Pentagon removing pages on its website honoring Ira Hayes, a member of the Pima tribe,  and the other Native Americans (Navajos) who served as code talkers on Iwo Jima.  We are living in very dark times, a bad day at Black Rock.  We are being firehosed with lawless or otherwise bad acts by Trump and his henchmen.   On top of all that, Israel has staged a massive attack on Gaza, ending the ceasefire that started at the end of the Biden administration, Trump has posted a call for the impeachment of the judge in the Venezuelan deportation case, and Chief Justice Roberts has issued a public statement responding that the way to address court decisions with which a party disagrees is to appeal the decision, what Bob Friebert would call 'a fight in the leper colony.'

Border czar Tom Homan said he doesn’t care what the judges think about the deportation flights of Venezuelan gang members as the administration faces a legal battle over the flight.  “I’m proud to be a part of this administration. We’re not stopping,” he said Monday on “Fox & Friends.”  "“I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care.”  We don't have a fully-fledged constitutional crisis and perhaps won't have one unless and until the Supreme Court gets involved in the case, but Homan's belligerent statement reflects, I believe, his boss's view.  It's hard to believe we won't eventually have a full-blown constitutional crisis with this president and administration of true-believing yesmen.  Or unless all three branches of the federal government join in embracing Trump's view of government, i.e., authoritarian, oligarchic, plutocratic, and fascistic.

Trump's scheduled telephone call with Putin today will be a modern-day version of the conversations between Hitler and Stalin preceding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 divvying up Poland and recognizing "spheres of influence" in Eastern Europe.  Of course, the treaty between these two autocrats meant nothing once Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, as Hitler had intended to do all along, just as Putin intends when the time is right to seize all of Ukraine, and, he hopes, the Baltic states and perhaps Poland as well.  One thing we can be sure of is that any deal that Trump and Putin can agree to will be a dirty deal in which both Ukraine and the United States will suffer, and Putin and Russia will be rewarded.  Trump sold out our allies the Kurds in Syria and he is selling out the Ukrainians.  Nancy Pelosi was right: with Trump, "all roads lead to Putin."

The Pentagon's cravenness in removing the Ira Hayes/code-talker pages from its website makes me sick.  When my Dad, who served in Iwo's 1st JASCO or Joint Assault Signal Company with the code-talkers, was alive and moving between Wisconsin and Arizona with the change of seasons, he and I would drive through the Navajo Reservation in north-east Arizona as he transitioned between Kitty's house and ours.  There was (and probably still is) only one radio station up there and it broadcasts in the Navajo language.  He would be reminded of his 27 days on the landing beach near the code-talkers.  Ira Hayes was an infantryman, trained as a Marine paratrooper and not a code-talker,  but he and  my Dad both came out of the war and the slaughterhouse of Iwo Jima, wrecked, 'mutilés de guerre.'  My Dad lived to age 86, bothered by 'bad dreams' until late in life, indeed until he left Florida to live with us in Wisconsin and Kitty and Jim in Arizona.  Ira Hayes died at age 32, an alcoholic, dead from exposure to cold, lying alone, outside on the ground.  Johnny Cash sang of him:

Call him drunken Ira Hayes

He won't answer anymore

Not the whiskey drinking Indian

Nor the Marine that went to war

There they battled up Iwo Jima's hill

Two hundred and fifty men

But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again

And when the fight was over

And when Old Glory raised

Among the men who held it high

Was the Indian, Ira Hayes.

Poor Ira Hayes, abused by the federal government before the war, used in the war to kil and to sell war bonds, and after the war forgotten, like my father and his young family,  by the government.  So it goes.

Huge victory for Trump!     In their 90-minute telephone conversation, Putin agreed with Trump not to attack Ukraine's energy infrastructure, leaving them free to concentrate on bombing and missile strikes on hospitals, apartment buildings, schools, and shopping centers PLUS, even this small concession to Ukraine is dependent on Ukraine agreeing not to mobilize any more soldiers,  nor can they bring in any more weapons and the U.S. must agree not to provide any more intelligence information to Ukraine.  More happy horseshit.

Geri is feeling better again today.

Who does this remind us of?  Feeling few, if any, emotions; Sadism (pleasure from causing pain to others); Lack of care for others; Pathological lying;; Charming personality;  Lack of fear; Risk-taking behavior; Inability to love;  No remorse for wrongdoing;  Poor judgment;  Lack of life goals; Using relationships purely for gain.  Traits of psychopaths.;  What do psychopaths look like?  Just like the rest of us, maybe better.

The SpaceX capsule landed successfully and thrillingly this afternoon.  Just amazing, astounding, no word to describe it.  Another great accomplishment for Elon Musk's company.  Would that he would get out of politics and government and stick to  the business of his companies.  The world would be better off.

3/17/2025

 Monday, March 17, 2025

D+130/57

1932 German police raided Adolf Hitler's Nazi headquarters

1945 Marine Charles E. Clausen departed Iwo Jima after 27 days

1966 US submarine located a missing hydrogen bomb on the Mediterranean sea floor

In bed at 9, awake at 4, and up at 4:10.  25° outside, high of 46°.   

Prednisone, day 330; 4 mg., day 12/21; Kevzara, day 12/14/  2 mg. of prednisone at 4:45 a.m. and  5 p.m.  Other meds at    .  I still have achy shoulders and hips and I wonder whether this is persisting PMR.  I see in my pill organizer that there are still 2 2mg. pills in the Sunday compartment though yesterday's notes indicate that I took 2 in the morning and another 2 in the afternoon.  Did I make the afternoon notation and then immediately forget to take the pilla?  Something's off.    

Reading scary headlines to start the day and week.  The NY Times:

DOGE’s Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts: Firings and buyouts have hit the top-secret National Nuclear Safety Administration amid a major effort to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal. 

Social Security Employees Warn of Damage From Musk’s Team: Current and former employees, both Republican and Democratic, are raising alarms about the damage that Elon Musk’s cost-cutting efforts could do.  

With Deportations, Trump Steps Closer to Showdown With Judicial Branch: Planes carrying Venezuelan detainees from the U.S. arrived in El Salvador, even though a federal judge had ordered that the flights not proceed.   

The Washington Post, owned and dominated by Trump/Musk toadie Jeff Bezos, has tamer headlines this morning, especially  about the defiance of a judicial  order that a plane full of deportees turn back:

White House official says 137 immigrants deported under Alien Enemies Act: Trump officials said the deportations don’t violate a judge’s order barring use of the statute for removals — but also questioned the order’s validity.

Timeline: Deportation flights landed after judge said planes must turn around

The 1st Amendment & What Trump said at his DOJ speech Friday:

These networks, and the newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative, and it has to stop.  It has to be illegal.  It's influencing judges, and it's really changing law, and it can't be legal.  I don't believe it's legal, and they do it in total coordination with each other. . .  Now, as the chief law enforcemnt officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.

"Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up."   This quote, anonymously and perhaps apocryphally, is attributed to Barack Obama and refers to Joe Biden.  It came to mind as I read the latest NBC poll about "your feelings toward the Democratic Party"  Negative 55%, Positive 27%, Neutral 18%.  The Democratic Party has been in the toilet since the 2024 presidential election.  One can argue about the myriad 'why's" of this, but it seems clear to me who is the person most responsible for it: Joe Biden.  His decision to run for a second term froze out all the potential Democratic competitors to Donald Trump.  Gavin Newsome, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear, Roy Cooper, J. B. Pritzker, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Adam Schiff, Chris Murphy, Sheldon Whitehouse, and undoubtedly many more, maybe even Bernie Sanders.  .  Could any of them have defeated Trump in the election?  We will never know because Joe Biden froze all of them out of the running, both by running himself and by anointing Kamala Harris as his heir and successor.  I fear that Trump and his minions will do inestimable damage to the government and the nation during this second term.  Some of the damage will be permanent, or as permanent as anything can be government.  Some will be long-lasting but remediable, but only long after I am dead.  The blame for this lies squarely at the feet of Joseph Robinette Biden.

Cliff Bergin Plumbing  (Peter)was here at 8 a.m.  He connected the drainage hose I bought at Ace last week.  $165.20 for a few minutes of work.  It reminded me of the joke about a lawyer complaining to his plumber about the cost of a service call and saying his fee was more than the lawyer charged for his service, to which the plumber responded, "That's why I left lawyering for plumbing."

Oxycodone, 5 mg., is Geri's latest pain med.  I picked it up at the Mequon Walgreens at 9 o'clock this morning.  Here's hoping it works and helps her regain full functionality of her left leg, without the nasty side effects she's been suffering from the other meds.

3/16/2025

Sunday, March 16, 2025

D+129/56

1968 My Lai massacre occurred when American soldiers killed ~400 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in one of the most controversial incidents of the Vietnam War

1977 US President Jimmy Carter pleaded for a Palestinian homeland

1978 US Senate accepted the Panama Canal treaty

2019 A beached dead whale was found to have 88 pounds of plastic inside it, including 40 pounds of plastic bags, in Mabini, Philippines

In bed by 9:30,  awake at 4:15, and up at 4:30  

Prednisone, day 329; 4 mg., day 12/21; Kevzara, day 12/14.  2 mg. of prednisone at 4:45 a.m. and 4:45 p.m.  Other meds at 3 p.m.  

My journal entries, or daily notes, for the last 2 and ½ years in the  binders, with my holographic chronicle of "Life in the Time of Covid" about Tump and the pandemic in watercolor sketchbooks on the right

Former selves.  There is a guest essay by the novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro in today's New York Times, "I Don’t Want Anyone to Read My Diaries. Yet I Can’t Burn Them."  She relates that she kept diaries and journals for years and some time ago decided to burn all of them but discovered that she couldn't do so.   

I grabbed more pages from the 1990 box, but before I had a chance to incinerate them, a few sentences caught my attention. I was writing about what it had been like for me as a young writer in New York just starting out. . . I stopped feeding more pages into the fire after making acquaintance with the self who wrote them. It felt like killing her somehow, to destroy evidence of who she had been. Maybe she still had things to teach me. . . Joan Didion wrote “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not" 

She added: 

As the author of multiple memoirs, I was accustomed to controlling my own narrative. People would often tell me they knew everything about me. “You didn’t read my diary,” I’d joke. “If you had, I’d have to kill you.” . . . 

I had always thought of my diaries as garbage cans into which I tossed all the detritus: the obsessions, petty jealousies, fantasies, secret crushes, stinging rejections, all to clear the path to my “real” work, which is to say the attempt to make meaning and even beauty out of the chaos of being human. Memoirs are crafted, edited stories, no matter how close to the bone. The decision to include or leave out certain details or scenes or even characters are strategic literary ones. What serves the story? Whereas diaries are, at least initially, dumping grounds. And yet dumping grounds can yield the most fertile soil.

The essay made me wonder again why i bother writing words that I expect no one but myself to read.  Some day when I've got a little energy and nothing else to do (including reading and writing), I hope to browse through the 2 and ½ years of daily entries in these notes ("journals" seems too presumptious, maybe precious) to find out how often I have reflected about why I keep writing into the void, to no one.  I write and post them on the Blogspot/Blogger platform but not to attract "followers," but rather because (1) I could never manage to write as much as I do by hand, or holographically as we lawyers say, and (2) the blog format allows me to include photos which please me, as in the case of my paintings and drawings, or which have some relevance to what I write about.  In any event, the most common reasons I have come up with for composing daily notes are (1) it's a poor substitute for the text conversations I had every morning with my sister Kitty, also my dear friend, (2) it's a way to try to clarify my thoughts about whatever I am writing about, and (3) it's a way of trying to keep track of how many of my mental marbles I am losing.  Dani Shapiro and Joan Didion suggest another reason: it's a way of "staying on nodding terms with" [the guy] I used to be, whether [I] find him attractive company or not."  This is to say, it's a bit like lying on a couch in a psychiatrist's office where I am both the patient and the psychiatrist.  I suppose that was what I was doing yesterday when I reflected on whether I was "a quitter," comparing myself perhaps unjustly though not maliciously to my Dad.  It's what I was doing whenever I reflected on my troubled relationship with my Dad from my earliest memories of him after the War until we became friends, thank God, late in life, or when I reflect how I kind of deserted my birth family when I left for college at age 18, and to the Marines at age 21.  Tom St. John, Ed Felsenthal, David Branch, and Kitty are all gone now.  I don't often see friends anymore and those I do see are considerably younger than me, none with similar backgrounds, and all busy with their own lives, children, and grandchildren.  So, I pick up my laptop early each morning and start writing to myself.

And speaking of my Dad,  80 years today was his last full day on Iwo Jima.  He offloaded from the island on St. Patrick's Day, 27 days after he landed on D-Day, February 19, 1945.  He may have left on an LCVP, an LCM, an Amtrak, so other means on his way to a troop ship or some other vessel configured to haul Marines in cramped troop quarters.  The island was completely occupied by the Marines on March 14th but not declared secure until March 27th.  More than 6,000 Marines died on the island along with almost all of the 21,000 Japanese defenders,  unimaginable carnage.  Each year, I think of him on Iwo's D-Day and on St. Patrick's Day, but also on the days before D-Day and St. Patrick's Day, when he wondered if he would die on Iwo and when he was pretty sure he had survived, but in what condition.  I've often noted that despite serving from February 1944 until November 1945, and serving on Iwo Jima, my father was discharged aas  Private E-1.  What happened on or after Iwo that he never made even PFC, E-2? I'll never know.  He shared precious little of his experiences in the Marines with me, though I clearly knew he had no love for the Corps.  The photo was taken at MCRD San Diego wearing "Dress Blues" that were provided to him for the photo to send home to his family.

Some Facebook notes:

Charles D. Clausen was  remembering my father.

February 18, 2019  · 

Tomorrow is the 74th anniversary of the assault on the island fortress of Iwo Jima by my 23 year old father and thousands of other Marines.  He was on the island for a month, returning to an offshore troop carrier on St.Patrick's Day.  He would never be the same as the young man who landed on February 19th, carrying his emotional and spiritual wounds throughout the rest of his life, until his death 61 years after the battle.  I think of him and of the thousands of other war veterans who carry hidden wounds throughout their lives.  I remember visiting Paris and riding on public conveyances with seats reserved for the "mutiles de guerre" disabled veterans.  How accurate it seems to think of these men and women in terms of mutilation, for mutilated they were and are.  Some gave all, all gave some.  Let's not forget them.

March 17, 2022  · 

On this date in 1945 my father trudged through black sand on the beach of Iwo Jima to board the landing craft that carried him to the ship that would carry him back to America after Japan surrendered post Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  He was physically intact but emotionally and spiritually wrecked by what he had experienced there.  For the rest of his life, St. Patrick's Day was never a day for revelry, but rather for remembrance and hurt.  I think of him, and of the many millions of lives, of souls, that are now being damaged in Ukraine and indeed in Russia.  And I fear that this war, like all wars, in a very real sense will never end for those who are wounded by it.  I'm reminded of the seats I saw on buses in Paris reserved for the "mutile de guerre," the war-wounded, and of how fitting the descriptor "mutilated" seems. 

 Geri is really miserable again today.  Her pain medication is taking a toll on her poor body.  It's hard to watch and much harder for her to live with.  Tomorrow morning, I pick up the oxycodone, hoping its side effects will be less pernicious, but well aware of its dangers.

         

O frabjous day, calloo callay.  A plump Eastern bluebird at our feeders this afternoon. 

Iwo Jima, from my memoir:

 

 

3/15/2024

 Saturday, March 15, 2025

D+128/55

44 BC Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by Brutus, Cassius and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March in Rome

1966 Riots erupted in the Watts section of Los Angeles, California

1989 US Department of Veterans Affairs was officially established as a Cabinet position

In bed by 9:15, awake at 3:30, and up at 3:45, unable to sleep with thoughts of time on the Milwaukee Ballet board, Jean-Paul Comelin, Ara Cherchian, Jutta, resignation, and time at F&F and the struggle to rename to FF&SJ, resignation.  My phone tells me we received 0.15 inches of rain in the last 6 hours, sounding as if we avoided the major thunderstorms that had been feared.    

Prednisone,  day 328; 4 mg., day 11/21; Kevzara, day 11/14.  2 mg. of prednisone at 4 a.m. and 5:15  p.m.  Other meds at 5:15 p.m.   .     

Big fish, small ponds.  I was a member of the board of directors of the Milwaukee Ballet Foundation for a few years.  I was invited onto the board through the recommendation of my good friend 😢 Ara Cherchian.  Ara was a senior vice president of Sclhlitz Brewing, in charge of their several canning factories around the country, with P & L responsibility.  He served as president of the ballet board for a couple of years and asked me to serve as treasurer, to which I agreed.  The company was young then and finances were always a challenge.  I was practicing law at F&F at the time and the firm was also young, for a time only 4 lawyers, Bob, John, Tom, and me and for a time Jeff Hirshberg, my MULS classmate, officing on the 5th floor of the Empire Bulding, 710 North Plankinton Avenue above the Riverside Theater.   While I was treasurer, there were times when I was hounded at the law firm by unpaid creditors of the ballet company, demanding impatiently but justly to be paid for their goods or services.  When Ara stepped down as president of the ballet company, he asked me to succeed him, and I (and the concurrence of the rest of the board) agreed.  Jean-Paul Comelin, our French artistic director,  had booked a tour of performances in several cities in the South.  The tour was not a money-maker.  On the contrary, it would cost the company many thousands of dollars that we neither had nor had any reasonable expectation of raising.  Ara and I and the other members of the executive committee of the board recommended to the board that the tour be canceled.  My vice-president, Santo Saliture from Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, voted with the rest of the executive committee to cancel the tour.  Comelin was insistent that the tour was important and necessary.  He started a telephone campaign with the non-executive members of the board to keep the tour.  He was successful and when the entire board met, a majority of the board voted to keep the tour.  Santo Saliture switched his vote from the executive committee.  I was - is outraged too strong a word? - and felt I needed to resign as president since the board had opted to ignore the recommendation of Ara and me and the rest of the executive committee.  I also felt I could not honestly and ethically sign contracts that I didn't think we could honor financially,  And so I resigned as president, saying in words or substance to Saliture, you switched sides so you sign those contracts.  My resignation was a bit of a scandal in the Milwaukee arts community because it highlighted the precarious financial condition of the ballet company and I agreed to stay on the board to avoid further scandal.  Santo became president, the company went on its tour, and somehow, the money was raised to survive the year and move into its brighter future.  For me, it was the end of my days as a player in the UPAF arts community.  Sic transit gloria mundi, but it makes me wonder about my history of resigning and whether I'm just a quitter, much as my poor father was.  I resigned from the law faculty on three separate occasions.   I resigned from my law firm three times.  I resigned as a commissioner of the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee, removing myself from the community of political appointees of Mayor Henry Meier. ?  I opted not to run for reelection to the board of directors of the Milwaukee Bar Association.  I resigned from the boards of Messmer High School and New World Montessori School at the end of my terms. Most importantly, I left my first marriage after almost 20 years. I left my community at St. Francis and the larger Catholic community when I left the House of Peace.  Do most people's lives have much straighter trajectories (oxymoron? flatter?) than mine?  Am I in again/out again Finnegan? 

 Stafford's Rpbert Sapolski insists that our actions are all determined by our genes, our hormones, our neurochemistry, our environments, and all that has occurred in our lives.  He argues that free will is an illusion.  In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Jason Zweig wrote "The Last Decision by the World’s Leading Thinker on Decisions" about the life, work, and death of Daniel Kahneman.  Kahneman was a Princeton psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his work on human decision-making.  He wasn't quite the determinist that Sapolsky is, but he argued (and supported his argument with experiments and data) that we do not make most of our decisions rationally but rather emotionally and inconsistently and often unwisely.  He asserted that we are all easily fooled, most easily by ourselves, by self-delusion.  One of Kahneman's important principles was the importance of reconsidering.  "“Most people hate changing their minds,” he said, “but I like to change my mind. It means I’ve learned something.”  In my old age, I am doing a lot of reconsidering and some serious regretting, mostly about my birth family and especially my mother.  Sapolsky would tell me to forget about regretting: everything I did and didn't do was determined, not the result of free choices of mine.  On the other hand, my regret is also determined, not the result of free will and conscience.  My writing about these thoughts is determined and what's the point of Kahneman's reconsdering?  Reconsidering may make sense before we act, ante facto, but not post facto.  What's done is done or, in the words of Bob Friebert's joke about the old Jews talking about sex, vat vas, vas.  Notwithstanding all of that, I do reconsider the path of my life and wonder about the choices I made, sometimes unwisely.  I think about letting my good friendships with Vicky Conte and Are Cherchian evanesce, probably because of emotional turmoil in my life.  I feel like Littlechap in Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, concluding the play singing What Kind of Fool Am I.   Should I have, could I have stayed on this or that board, with all its relationships?  On the law school faculty?  At the law firm? At the House of Peace and in the community of St. Francis?  The hardest question, in my marriage to Anne?  I'm almost inclined to side with Sapolsky's theory of Determinism, to think that all these choices were (almost) determined, which is to say I did what I had to do.  I couldn't have acted otherwise and still be me.

Kahneman’s friend Annie Duke, a decision theorist and former professional poker player, published a book in 2022 titled “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away.” In it, she wrote, “Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early.”