6/13/2025

 Friday, June 13, 2025

D+198/131/1317

In bed at 9, awake and up at 3:55.  55°, high of 64°, wind chill 47°, cloudy, partly cloudy day.

Kevzara, day 4/14; Trulicity, day 1/7; morning meds at 56 a.m.; Blink pill at 6 a.m.; Eye wipes at 7:20  a.m. and   p.m.; Eye mask at 7:30 a.m. and p.m./ Eye ointment at bedtime.  I missed the eye ointment again last night.  It's a challenge being alert enough and awake enough and not intent on crashing into bed to deal with washing up and putting ointment on the inside of my eyelid.  

Sarah arrives today on her around-the-world trip.        

I'm having problems with my vision.  First, it was floating medallion-like things early this morning.  Also, my right eyelid wants to shut, making me rely solely on my left eye.  I have to consciously keep the right eyelid open.  It seems to be mostly a problem while reading, as opposed to looking long distances.  Also, the persistent problem with a piece of grit in my right eye continues, a serious problem with driving.

Jan Anderson's FB post about the manhandling of Senator Padilla; my comment   

This is what happens when you disagree with the Trump administration these days. When you ask questions they don’t like. If it can happen to a sitting Senator, what will happen to you?

On the bright side, at least Sen. Padilla isn’t a puppy…

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Z95ssU1vw/?mibextid=wwXIfr

That's a great line about the puppy but I know your point is very serious and I certainly agree. One of the characteristics of the interwar development of fascism was the use of force and the everpresent threat of the use of force to silence and punish dissent, disagreement, and disobedience. Trump, Vance, Noem, Bondi, Patel, and Hegseth are well aware of this. Political opponents and adversaries are never merely opponents and adversaries, but rather are enemies to be countered by force and the threat of force. This was but one example. Sending soldiers and Marines into LA was another. There will be more. It's the nature of the beast. We are in deep trouble.

 I'm worried that tomorrow will be a worse-than-nasty day.  While Trump will be reveling in his birthday parade and making thousands of soldiers march by his reviewing stand like mechanical soldiers, dutifully turning their heads toward him at the command "Eyes right!" saluting to him as they pass, tens of thousands of other Americans will be gathering in cities and towns across the country demonstrating their opposition to what Trump is doing to and with the armed forces and with federal law enforcement agencies.  Perhaps all the ordered and obsequious military pageantry in Washington will be enough to deflect his ire about those "No Kings" counter-demonstrations everywhere else in his realm, and probably there will be too many of them for him to crack down on them and show them who's boss, but perhaps not.   My greater fear is that some fellow fascisti, official and/or unofficial, or in combination, will attack the anti-Trumpers.  That is the kind of conflict a contemporary civil war will look like, not states against states, but fascists and anti-fascists battling each other and sabotaging each other's efforts to gain or maintain power, by arson, bombing, assassinations, hacking, doxing, etc.  I note that today the Missouri governor, a Republican, has activated the state's National Guard in advance of tomorrow's No Kings rallies across the state.

 Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe (R) on Thursday declared a state of emergency and activated the state’s National Guard in anticipation of protests across the state — and in response to “civil unrest” across the country. . .  

“While other states may wait for chaos to ensue, the State of Missouri is taking a proactive approach in the event that assistance is needed to support local law enforcement in protecting our citizens and communities,” he added. 

 “Mayor Lucas is concerned with enhanced state enforcement for one set of protestors, but no action or aid to local law enforcement when Neo-Nazis march through Missouri’s urban streets,” the statement reads. “The Mayor has confidence in responsible protestors to use their First Amendment rights peacefully and in compliance with the law. More than one thousand Kansas Citians protested peacefully and responsibly just days ago.”

This is another form of repression.  When anti-fascists gather to protest, military men with long rifles and armored vehicles surround them.  When fascists march, no interference.  When thousands of insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on January 6, instigated by Donald Trump and shouting "Where's Nancy" and "Hang Mike Pence," no National Guard, no soldiers, no Marines to help the outnumbered Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police.  Trump sat in his lunchroom off the Oval Office and watched the television as the crimes were committed.  Of course, that was different.  That mob was pro-Trump.  Tomorrow's peace-minded demonstrators are anti-Trump.   

Israel and Iran are attacking each other.  After Gaza and the settlers in the West Bank, after Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir, it's tempting to say 'Go, bear.  Go, mother-in-law.'  But after all of Iran's aggression by proxy against Israel over so many years, I can't blame Israel for doing what it can to bring Iran to its knees, at least for a time.

 

 

6/12/2025

 Thursday, June 12, 2025

D+197/130/1318

1942 Anne Frank received her diary as a birthday present in Amsterdam

1963 American civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in Jackson, Mississippi

1965 South Vietnam Gen Nguyen Cao Ky succeeded Phan Huy Quat as premier

In Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws against interracial marriages

1980 Ronald Reagan said he would submit to periodic medical tests

2017 Forbes released the Top 100 highest-paid entertainers list - Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs at No.1 with earnings of $130 million

In bed at 9 after nodding on and off during  The Royal Tenenbaums, awake and up at 4:42 with aching hips and right shoulder, hands and fingers stiff and achy.  58°, high of 65°, cloudy, AQI is 103    

A start

Kevzara, day 3/14; Trulicity, day 6/7; morning meds at 8 a.m.; Blink pill at 7:50 a.m.; Eye wipes at 5:10 a.m. and  p.m.; Eye mask at 6 a.m. and p.m.    I missed applying the eye ointment last night because I was half-asleep by the time I went to bed last night.  I dozed through most of The Royal Tenenbaums.  I'm sleeping more than I used to, but not sleeping well.  Hard to tell whether my lack of energy is due to sleep problems or just old age or perhaps some mild dejection from chronic pain.

LTMW at 7 a.m., I see neighbor Ghasson Majdalani and Athena stopping on their early morning to chat with another elderly neighbor.  I first saw Ghasson and Athena about 20 minutes ago, turning the corner onto County Line Road.  Athena seems to be familiar with the other neighbor because she is wagging her tail and seems to be excited to play with him.  I wonder whether he may be carrying some treats for her, or perhaps Ghasson has given him some to give to Athena.  In any event, seeing them interacting out there reminds me of the important role strolling and walking have in developing neighborliness, friendships, and a sense of community.  Geri knows and is known by a great many more neighbors than me, simply from being outside more.

"The Republicans have sold their souls to the devil."  Those were the words of Judge Luttig on a Substack podcast with Ryan Lizza that I watch early this morning.  In thinking about Trump himself but also his henchmen like the odious and irascible Stephen Miller and myrmidon Tom Homan, I think of Emily Dickinson's

A face devoid of love or grace,

A hateful, hard, successful face,

A face with which a stone

Would feel as thoroughly at ease

As were they old acquaintances —

First time together thrown.

VA visit with Dr. Chatt went well.  I'll get the results of the blood and  urine tests in a couple of days.

Beautiful Milwaukee.  I drove home along the lakefront today, through my old neighborhood on Newberry Boulevard, past Sendik's, past David's first apartment when he started at UW-M.  I get emotional during these drives, not only because they are so loaded with memories for me, so much a big part of my life, but also because I see so much breathtaking (for me) beauty all over the place, so many very attractive home and so much lushiousmgreenery - trees, flowers, landscaping.  It's like I developed this huge crush on Milwaukee, Shorewood, and the North Shore.  Beauty everywhere, and I always think of my sister, how I wish she were with me to enjoy how gorgeous this place is, how much I miss her, how fortunate I've been, so many deep emotions.

Geri is sick, with what I think may be bronchitis. 

6/11/2025

 Wenesday, June 11, 2025

 D+196/139/1319

1898  Marines  landed at Guantanamo, Cuba, during the Spanish–American War

1963  A Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức immolated himself at a Saigon intersection

1963 Gov Wallace tried to prevent blacks from registering at the University of Alabama

In bed at 9:45, awake and up at 4:50.   59°, high of 81°.  AQI is 93, moderate.  

Kevzara, day 2/14; Trulicity, day 5/7; morning meds at 7:30 a.m.; Blink pill at 7:30 a.m.; Eye wipes at 5:20 a.m. and   p.m; Eye mask at  a.m. and  p.m.; Eye ointment at bedtime.    I applied the eye ointment for the first time last night on my right eye, or I sort of did.  I seem to have missed the target again, as I sometimes do with the drops, and ended up with much of the ointment on the outside of my lower lid. 

On Facebook this morning.

My Dad was a Marine on Iwo Jima in 1945.  I was a Marine in Vietnam in 1965.  My Dad’s gone now but I know he would share my shock and outrage at Marines being deployed operationally to Los Angeles in 2025.  Despite their fancy dress uniforms, their ceremonial and security  presence at the White House and at embassies around the world, the business of the Marine Corps is visiting death and destruction on real enemies of our nation and our people, i.e., killing people and destroying stuff.  It’s what Marines train for from the first day of boot camp.  Although in close order drill Marines may look like mechanical soldiers, they are not toys.  They are not to be played with, even by or especially by their commander-in-chief.  The same is true for Army soldiers and other members of the nation’s armed forces.  Whether in deploying Marines to the streets of Los Angeles or in ordering a wasteful and destructive parade of soldiers  on the streets of Washington , D.C. to celebrate his birthday in a manner befitting Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin, the current C-in-C, a draft dodger during Vietnam, plays with our soldiers and Marines, like a child moving toy soldiers around an imagined battleground.  He does it simply because he can and because it provides some temporary gratification to his insatiable and perverse ego.  Shame on him.  Shame on us for giving him the power and authority to abuse and misuse our military men and women.  Sorry, Dad.  Sorry, fellow Marines and soldiers.  You deserve better.

Micky the Mope, Denny the Downer, Charlie the Churl.  If anyone should happen upon this journal/blog/set of notes and read more than a couple pages of it, the reader would probably think that the writer was a chronically unhappy person, a complainer, a woe is me, poor me, life is so unfair mope, downer, or churl, and maybe I am.  Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy, and all that.  That being acknowledged, however, the impression of persistent dreariness while true enough, is at least incomplete because I find that in my old age I am much more appreciative, indeed almost newly infatuated, with much in my life to which I heretofore was totally oblivious,  I've mentioned some of them in these pages: clouds in the sky, individual homes, commercial buildings and factories, trees, birds that frequent our feeders and those that stop briefly on their way to somewhere else, white-tail deer, bunnies, chipmunks, even field mice, Geri's beautiful gardens that provide sustenance to neighborhood wildlife, our backyard, neighbors and friends, but also strangers who are kind or helpful to me, or who would be if they thought I was in need of some kindness or help.  Though I mope about loneliness and the absence of those who were dear to me, I appreciate solitude and silence.  (You can't please some guys!)  I enjoy poetry that touches my heart or that kicks me in the stomach.   I enjoy painting, not that I am 'a Painter!; but simply and sufficiently because I am a guy who like to paint, like a kid who like to draw or to color.  Although these daily scribblings demonstrate it too seldom and too little, I am blessed with an attitude of gratitude, for my mother and my father and my sister, for my wife, and my children and grandchildren, for the friends that I have and the friends that I have lost. and for all the men and women who have helped me in one way or another as I sought my way through life.  Although it often stings me or weighs me down with painful remorse and regret, I'm thankful that I was brought up to have a conscience.  " . . . not a day / But something is recalled, / My conscience or my vanity appalled."  The house we live in and almost own is wonderful.  So was our last house, and the lakeview condo in the Knickerbocker, and our houses in Shorewood, and my first home on Newberry Boulevard.   I have enjoyed every place I have ever lived in , except perhaps the tent and the corrugated steel hut I lived in in Danang, and even those sorry venues were not without value.  In sum, I have so very much that I am thankful for that I oughtn't be mistaken for an unmitigated Micky the Mope.

A Bitter Truth.  From Tom Friedman's op-ed in today's NYTimes, "This Israeli Government Is a Danger to Jews Everywhere"

Israelis, diaspora Jewry and friends of Israel everywhere need to understand that the way Israel is fighting the war in Gaza today is laying the groundwork for a fundamental recasting of how Israel and Jews will be seen the world over.

It won’t be good. Police cars and private security at synagogues and Jewish institutions will increasingly become the norm; Israel, instead of being seen by Jews as a safe haven from antisemitism, will be seen as a new engine generating it; sane Israelis will line up to immigrate to Australia and America rather than beckon their fellow Jews to come Israel’s way. That dystopian future is not here yet, but if you don’t see its outlines gathering, you are deluding yourself.

 . .  . . 

If . . .  Israel goes ahead with Netanyahu’s vow to perpetuate this war indefinitely — to try to achieve “total victory” over every last Hamasnik, along with the far right’s fantasy of ridding Gaza of Palestinians and resettling it with Israelis — Jews worldwide better prepare themselves, their children and their grandchildren for a reality they’ve never known: to be Jewish in a world where the Jewish state is a pariah state — a source of shame, not of pride.

I'm afraid that time has already arrived and may be irreversible.   It's not merely Gaza and the IDF; its the West Bank, the settlers, and the IDF also.  

The House of Peace.   I took some shirts down to the House of Peace this afternoon and was able to visit with Linda Barnes, who is its director now.  When I held the job, Linda was a social worker, stationed full-time at the HOP, but an employee of Catholic Charities.  When CC was having some budget problems, they cut her position, and her employment was picked up by the HOP.  We visited for 20 minutes of so and got nostalgic talking about the years when I was working there.  We both loved Father Matthew and Gerry Sheets-Howard.  She took my telephone number and said she would give it to Gerry, who I hope will call me.  Her 'boys' are now in their 40s, and she has 7 grandchildren.  She herself is 68 or 69, ready to retire in a year of so.  Gerry's boys, Joshua and Isaiah, are also grown men now (of course.)  Father Al Veik is still living in Brother Booker Ashe's apartment upstairs at the HOP and is still the Vicar for Religious at the archdiocese.  When I departed, I took one of my nostalgic drives through 'the old neighborhood/' which now almost resembles a suburb with all the new middle-class housing, but the 'old' neighborhood is never very far away: old homes in bad shape and vacant lots where homes used to stand.  There used to be a home converted into a fresh fish store next door to us on the west.  It was owned and operated by an old lady.  We tried to buy the property for the HOP, but she asked way too much to sell it so we took a pass.  I don't know when the HOP finally acquired it, but the space is now vacant and owned by the HOP.  I have a pretty vivid memory of going into the shop with Gerry Sheets-Howard to see if the owner was interested in selling the property, and Gerry almost passing out from the smell of the fish.  Actually, I have many memories of Gerry, all good.  I have more memories of my days at the HOP that I can relate here.  I wish I had kept a journal during those 2 and 1/2 years.  It would be very interesting indeed, as was my life during that time.

I picked up my 'post-cataract surgery' eyeglasses at Costco this afternoon.  There seems to be a noticeable improvement in my vision.

6/10/2025

 Tuesday, June 10, 2025

D+195/138/1320

1898 US Marines landed in Cuba during the Spanish–American War

1942 Nazis killed all the inhabitants of Lidice, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Czech Republic) which had been implicated in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi controller of Bohemia and Moravia, to “teach the Czechs a final lesson of subservience and humility”; more than 170 adult men were executed by firing squad on site, women and children were sent to concentration camp gas chambers, and the village was burned down and plowed under

In bed at 10:30, awake and up at 3:50, worked on the Gauguin self-portrait until 4:20 before moving to the TV room, where I lit my Kitty candle.  Old habits die hard, or don't die.  Every time I even say the words, I think of her, and again when I light it, and every time I look across the room at it.   53°, high of 72°, partly cloudy day.

Kevzara, day 1/14 at 10:30 a.m.; Eye scrub, 4:50 a.m. and 5 p.m;  Eye mask, 5:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.; other meds at 6:30  a.m.  Blink pill at 6:15 a.m.    

I don't know what to think of this knock-off of one of Gauguin's many self-portraits, but I greatly enjoyed doing it using a light board, medium-weight watercolor paper, a graphite pencil, and watercolor pencils.  I would not have been displeased if I had stopped before applying any color to the face and jacket, but I'm not displeased with this semi-final result; I'll probably mess around with it some more before calling it quits.  I very much enjoyed working with the watercolor pencils and will probably keep using them.  One big advantage over painting with acrylics on canvas is that all my acrylic supplies and equipment is in the basement, and getting up and down the basement stairs is increasingly a challenge, whereas the gouache and watercolor work I can do on the desk in my bedroom.  I realize I'm no more sophisticated, creative, or artistic than a kid with a coloring book and a box of crayons trying to stay within the lines, but painting provides me much the same kind of pleasure that golfing or attending various sporting events provides to other guys, and it's a lot cheaper and it's never dependent on the weather.  I'm a lucky man (in many more ways than this.)

I'm not writing much today.  I was so blown away this morning by Trump sending Marines into Los Angeles that I thought I should write something about it, at least in this journal and perhaps something on Facebook.  I was stymied, however, when I wondered what I should say, and why I should say anything.  It would just be more words, more carping and kvetching in the face of the raw exercise of power.    Words and laws (more words) seem to lose all meaning in this environment of brute power.  As Trump would say to Zelenskii, he's got all the cards and we have none.  He and his myrmidons learned well from his first term.  All that counts for a president is to put only amoral, subservient, loyalists in positions of power in the government.  He is a mob boss, he's in charge, and he has another 3 and 1/2 years to work his evil will on the nation.  What will be left after him and his wrecking crew?    

In additon to his sending 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marine into Los Angeles, RFK, Jr. has shitcanned every single member of the CDc's 17 member Advisory Commitee on Immunization Practices.  They had all been appointed by Joe Biden. I suppose that was reason enough to can them from JFK, Jr.'s point of view and that of his boss in the Oval Orifice. Still, we can be pretty sure of what kind of "experts" Kennedy will replace them with and how this stunt will affect childhood vaccination utilization throughout the U.S.  Also, behind the scenes manipulation and bribing is going on to get the Republican senators on board Trump's 'big, beautiful, budget bill' that shamelessly increase the national debt, deprive millions of Americans of health insurance (and cause many of them to die prematurely and unnecessarily), and cut the Food Stamp and many other programs - all to enable more tax 'relief' for billionaires.  AND, on Saturday, Trump will preside over a military parade supposedly celebrating the 250th birthday of the US Army, but really celebrating Trump's coinciding birthday, all at a cost of about $45,000,000.

From the lakes of Minnesota

To the hills of Tennessee

Across the plains of Texas

From sea to shining sea

From Detroit down to Houston,

And New York to L.A

Well there's pride in every American heart

And its time we stand and say

And I'm proud to be an American

Where at least I know I'm free

And I won't forget the men who died

Who gave that right to me

And I'd gladly stand up

Next to you and defend her still today

'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land

God bless the USA

Thank you, Lee Greewood.  I suppose this will be played a lot on Saturday.

Geri came home today with a sore throat. She didn't want to stay at Steve's while feeling poorly so she came home.  

6/9/2025

 Monday, June 9, 2025

D+194/138/1321

2016 US President Barack Obama officially endorsed Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Presidential nominee, earning Joe Biden's lasting enmity

2020 US Senate unanimously confirmed General Charles Q. Brown (58) as Air Force Chief of Staff, 1st African American to lead a US armed forces branch.  He was later named as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs by Biden, but was abruptly removed by Trump 

2022 First public hearing of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was held.  After the American electorate restored Trump to power, he said the committee members should be investigated and prosecuted.

In bed at 9:30, awake and up at 4:55.  56°, high of 64°, AQI at 106, unhealthy for sensitive groups because of Canadian wildfires, a reminder that nowhere escapes the effects of climate change, notwithstanding Trumpian claims of 'hoax.'  While preparing a cup of honeyed Whispering Wildflower herbal tea, I spotted through the kitchen window a lone deer standing on its hind legs, nibbling a leaf or a new berry on the western County Line tree.  A couple of minutes later, it scratched behind its left ear with its hind hoof.  He moved slowly in the matutinal light, ever alert, its very large ears twitching and reminding me of mule deer.  It seemed to sense my presence at the kitchen window before ambling over to Geri's marginal garden, out of my sight.  Geri works so hard on her gardens and is terribly frustrated that, to the neighborhood deer, rabbits, and other varmints, they are a cafeteria line of delectibles there for their choosing and eating. Two or three days ago, I hung the squirrel-proof tube feeder chock full of sunflower and safflower seeds on the. tree just off the patio.  I looked at it today, and it is empty, almost certainly because of deer, not because of birds.  AQI is 110 from Canada's wildfires.  

Morning meds at 5:25 a.m.  Eye wipes at 6:45 a.m. and at 6:15 p.m.   Blink pill at 6:25 a.m.  Eye mask at 6:50 a.m.  and  7 p.m.  I meditated for several minutes under the eye pads.  I'm very arthritic this morning; even my hands and fingers are stiff and achy.  I had more middle-of-the-night hip pain last night.

Geri is off to Chicago to visit Steve for a day or two.  Nikki is visiting her sister Julie in Washington State.

Sarah will be here this weekend, for Father's Day, coincidentally (or not!?).

A Monday Morning in Trump's America.  I have been sitting in my recliner much of the morning, alternately looking at the news from Los Angeles and at our bird feeders and the foot and vehicle traffic on Wakefield Court.  Earlier this morning, I saw Ghassan Majdalani walking Athena.  Later, two young mothers passed by with children in strollers.  Cars carrying our neighbors to their work sites drive by as they do every workday.  And of course, our neighborhood birds show up for breakfast and bruch ofd sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, niger seeds, suet, or a bit of orange.  It looks like a peaceful, normal morning in peaceful, normal Bayside, Wisconsin.

The tidings in the newspapers and on the television screen tell a very different tale.  Trump has sent, over the objections of the Governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles, up to 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles because of demonstrations and scattered violence aimed at ICE raids on various worksites looking for undocumented immigrants.  The targets are not violent criminals, but rather immigrants who entered the United States without authorization or who overstayed their visas.  Los Angeles is the second most populous city in America, with approximately 3.8 million residents.  The metropolitan area is home to almost 13 million.  The city is majority minority, with only about 28% non-Hispanic White, 8.5% Black, 12% Asian, and more than 47% Hispanic or Latino.

Yesterday I wrote: 

 Trump has taken a bad situation and made it worse.  He has unnecessarily created a situation of armed conflict between the armed forces of the United States and American citizens.  There will be bad reactions from bad people striving to foment trouble, anger, reactions and overreaction.  The arrival of National Guard troops in Los Angeles today is the arrival of more trouble for the people of LA. . . .  Inflaming and escalating the tension in the city by sending in armed troops is asking for trouble, and we can be sure that there will be people in LA who will be only too happy to accommodate him.  We have to wonder whether Trump, Vance, Bondi, Hegseth, and/or Noem hope that there will be shooting, injuries, and/or deaths.  They all delight in showing strength and nothing demonstrates strength over an opponent like killing him does.

In David French's op-ed in the Times this morning, he says:

It’s worth asking: Does Trump want protesters to get hurt? Recall that Mark Esper, a former Trump secretary of defense, has said that in 2020 Trump asked Gen. Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?” Esper took his comment as both a suggestion and a question.  

As I so often said to my dear Sister in our morning conversations when I made frightening predictions about Trump, I hope I'm wrong, but so far, in addition to skirmishes along police and National Guard lines, a Molotov cocktail has been thrown at a police officer and a motorcycle has been driven into a police line.   The chief of LAPD has said the local police force is already overwhelmed.  Televised news footage makes it very clear that there are many people present at the sites where demonstrations are occurring who are intent on causing trouble, taunting law enforcement officers and Guardsmen, waving Mexican and Salvadoran national flags, throwing rocks, etc.  700 Marines is prepared to deploy from Camp Pendleton to serve in Los Angeles, in what capacity and to what end and under what rules of engagement we are not told.  Here's my thoughts on that atrocity in my text to Geri this afternoon:

Hi,  Sweetie.  Sarah sent me an email days ago saying she will be here  this weekend and, if it’s convenient, it’s our turn to host her.  I told her she’s always welcome and expect her to stay here.  I told her you will be going tp the No King rally at Cathedral Square on Saturday.  Andy and Anne have been talking about brunch on Sunday and I haven’t said anything but it’s Father’s Day and I think I should say we will attend.  That’s assuming someone can get a reservation on Father’s Day.  I’m having leftover spaghetti tonight.  I spent the day watching news out of LA, including the fact that 700 Marines from Camp Pendleton are being sent there which makes me almost sick to my stomach and angry about a flagrant misuse and abuse of Marines.  Also learned of the $45,000,000 military parade on Saturday for Trump’s birthday.  Outrageous.  I also worked on a gouache drawing this afternoon.  I’m surprised and pleased that I’m doing quite OK despite your absence, keeping myself busy around the house, reading, writing, painting, and keeping up on the news so if you’re inclined to stay over tomorrow night, don’t be disinclined by any concern about me.❤️💕

WIP

In 2016, Trump received 62,984,828 votes, 46.1% of the popular vote. In 2020, Trump received 74,223,975 votes, 46.8% of the popular vote. In 2024, Trump received 77,302,580 votes, 49.8% of the popular vote. What does the trend line suggest about where our country is and where our country is headed?

6/8/2025

 Sunday, June 8, 2025

D+193/137/1322

1954 Joseph Welch asked Senator Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" during Senate-Army hearings

1978 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) struck down its 148-year policy of excluding black men from the priesthood

1980 Comedian Richard Pryor suffered severe burns from freebasing cocaine

2011 BU's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy agreed to examine the brains of 2 deceased San Francisco 49ers football players  for signs of injury 

2023 Donald Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges including false statements, conspiracy to obstruct, and willful retention of national defense information 

2025 Peter Charles Clausen graduated from Nicolet High School

In bed at 9:30, awake and up at 3:45.  56°, high of 71°, rainy later.  

Morning meds at 7:40 a.m.  Lid wipes at 7 a.m.    Blink pill at 7 a.m. .  Eye pads at 6:30 a.m. and 3 p.m.  

From the halls of Montezuma to the streets of Los Angeles.  In this morning's newspapers, I learned:

President Trump took extraordinary action on Saturday by calling up 2,000 National Guard troops to quell immigration protests in California, making rare use of federal powers and bypassing the authority of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

and that:

Mr. Trump’s directive authorized the secretary of defense to “employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.” In Mr. Hegseth’s post on X, he said that active duty Marines were “on high alert” at Camp Pendleton, about 100 miles south of Los Angeles, and could also be mobilized.

A nightmare coming true.  Trump has taken a bad situation and made it worse.  He has unnecessarily created a situation of armed conflict between the armed forces of the United States and American citizens.  There will be bad reactions from bad people striving to foment trouble, anger, reactions and overreaction.  The arrival of National Guard troops in Los Angeles today is the arrival of more trouble for the people of LA. I think of my very-shirttail relative or ex-relative, Maggie Aquavia, in Sherman Oaks in the Valley.  I think of my old Marine Corps, MCAS Yuma,  and Danang RVN buddy Bob Hillary.  I think of the millions of Angelinos who don't deserve what is about to happen in their city.  Inflaming and escalating the tension in the city by sending in armed troops is asking for trouble, and we can be sure that there will be people in LA who will be only too happy to accommodate him.  We have to wonder whether Trump, Vance, Bondi, Hegseth, and/or Noem hope that there will be shooting, injuries, and/or deaths.  They all delight in showing strength and nothing demonstrates strength over an opponent like killing him does.

The photograph above, by Jonathan Bachman, is of 35-year-old Iesha L. Evans, a nurse and the mother of a young boy, standing her ground in Baton Rouge, LA, during a protest of police brutality on July 11, 2016..  I was and still am moved by this image of Ms. Evans in her green flowing garment and flats being rushed by two burly, heavily armed National Guardsmen in combat boots, helmets, and body armor.  It took much effort and a bit of luck before I was able to obtain a large print of the photograph which I keep on the table behind my work desk next to the photograph below by Marc Riboud of Jan Rose Kasmir, a 17 year old high school student offering a daisy to a heavily armed trooper outside the Pentagon during a peace protest on October 21, 1967, while the Vietnam War was being waged by other American troops.  Each photo vividly illustrates the great disparity in power and brute force between heavily armed and combat-equipped soldiers and ordinary American citizens, especially those exercising their 1st Amendment rights to peacably assemble and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.  We will probably see something like the scenarios in these photos played out in Los Angeles over the next few weeks.

I can't believe Trump will find occasion to send the Marines from Camp Pendleton but if he does, God help us. 

 

References in Judith Viorst's Necessary Losses chapter I grow old . . . I grow old . . 

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .  / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.    T. S.  Eliot

An aged man is but a paltry thing,  / A tattered coat upon a stick, unless  / Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing / For every tatter in its mortal dress.    W. B. Yeats

How hard and painful are the last days of an aged man!  He grows weaker every day; his eyes become dim, his ears deaf; his strength fades, his heart knows peace no longer; his mouth falls silent and he speaks no word.  The power of his mind lessens, and today he cannot remember what yesterday was like..  All his bones hurt.  The things which not long ago were done with pleasure are painful now, and taste vanishes.  Old age is the worst of misfortunes that can afflict a man.  Ptah-hotep, 2500 /B.C.

Time, O great destroyer, and envious old age, together you bring all things to ruin.    Ovid

Never a soul is to be seen, or very few, who in growing old does not take on a sour and mouldy smell.    Montaigne

Old age is like a shipwreck.    Chateaubriand

It is a long time now since I ceased to exist.  I merely fill the place of someone they take for me.   Gide

Old age is life's parody.   de Beauvoir

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

I would add the words of the great Walt Whitman.  These words are not direct quotations from a single poem or letter or piece of prose, but are taken from Whitman's vast writings and combined into one piece as if from a poem of his.  I found them while looking for a poem of his that I am familiar with, about the challenges of approaching seventy.  The editor who compiled and compounded these words took parts of that poem, and changed it, with the following:

Not my least burden is that dullness of the years, querilities, ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui, may filter in my daily songs. My fear will be that at last my pieces show indooredness, and being chain’d to a chair—as never before. 

His total compilation is too long to copy and paste here, but here is a worthy sample: 

Having gone a year or two past sixty, / I shall range upon the high plateau of my life and capacity for a few years, / Then reach a viaduct called, The Turn in Life, / Which, if crossed in safety, leads to the valley of old age— / And then swiftly descend.

In youth and maturity poems are charged with sunshine and varied pomp of day. But as the soul more and more takes precedence, (the sensuous still included,) the dusk becomes the poet’s atmosphere.

I too have sought, and ever seek, the brilliant sun, and make my songs according, / But as I grow old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat, / The half-lights of evening are far more to me, /And now, after surmounting three-score and ten, / With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows, / I chant old age.

Writing here in sickness, poverty, and old age, alarm’d, uncertain, / Batter’d, wreck’d, sore, sicken’d, stiff with many toils, / Fearfully weak, toppling, full of defections, / The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in me, / I have substantially gone out of business.

I sit here and wait. What else can I do? I do not suffer any pain. But I have been growing feebler quite rapidly for a year, failing more and more each successive season. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot walk far; now can’t walk around hardly from one room to the next, the paralysis never lifting entirely.  I am not getting prizes for agility—foot-races—any longer!

My lassitude is one of the worst points in my condition. It seems to me as though a great numbness, an inertia, had come over me. It’s funny how unambitious my body is; I am like a wet rag, possessed of an incredible inclination to flop.

 

Peter's graduation was accessible on YouTube, so Geri and I were able to see the whole ceremony.  I  especially enjoyed the address by the Nicolet principal.   I sent a note to Peter afterwards.

Hi, Peter, and congratulations again.  I watched the ceremony from home on YouTube, regretting that I couldn’t be there but grateful that I didn’t have to deal with getting into and out of the Arena and dealing with those steps and Arena seats.  I attended many a Marquette basketball game there in years gone by and may have graduated from there myself either from undergraduate school or law school, but I can’t remember; it may have been the Auditorium.  In any case, I suspect you may have very mixed feelings on the day that marks such a major inflection point in your life, some joy at having achieved all that you have but some sadness in realizing that what has been such a large part of your life for the past 4 years is now entirely behind you as you prepare for engineering school and the rest of your adult life.  Moving from childhood and adolescence into adulthood is quite a transition, not many like it in life.   I’m very proud of you and wish you all the best as you move on.❤️

He replied:  Thank you so much! I really appreciate it, I hope I see you soon! 

Dinner tonight with Caela and Saul,  celebrating 40 years in the house on Wood Place and 38 years since Geri and I wed there.

6/7/2025

Saturday, June 7, 2025

D+192/137/1323

1965 The Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut, effectively legalizing the use of contraception by married couples

2020 John Prine died

In bed at 9, up at 4:50 after a rough night with bladder pain/discomfort, 5 pit stops (?).  I need another look-see by a urologist.  I stopped taking misoprostol 3 times a day after the last bladder fulguration.  I'm thinking this was a mistake. ["Misoprostol is a synthetic prostaglandin that works by replacing prostaglandins whose production is blocked by aspirin or NSAIDs. It is used to prevent stomach ulcers from developing during treatment with aspirin or an NSAID." Drug.com]  54°,high of 66°

(Not) Taking care of myself.  I forgot to take my fistful of 'other meds' yesterday: blood pressure (2), diabetes (2) (did I take my Trulicity injection???), cholesterol,  prostate (2), gout, 325 mg. TIA aspirin, GERD, CoQ10, B6, B12.  Better living through chemicals.  Longer living through chemicals.  To what end? 

A fleeting thought, a fleeting heartache while driving driving away from the Chinese tailor shop after picking up trousers, thinking of my birth family, gone, and lyrics "I'm going home to see my father . . .

I Am A Poor Wayfaring Stranger

I am a poor wayfaring stranger

A-trav'ling through this land of woe.

And there's no sickness, toil or danger

In that bright world to which I go.

I'm going home to see my father (mother, sister, brother etc.)

I'm going there no more to roam;

I'm just a-going over Jordan

I'm just a-going over home.

I know dark clouds will gather 'round me

I know my way is steep and rough;

But beauteous fields lie just beyond me

Where souls redeemed their vigil keep.

I'm going there to meet my mother

She said she'd meet me when I come

I'm just a-going over Jordan

I'm just a-going over home. . . . . 

Where'd that come from?  Out of the blue.  'Brain noise', or more?

More from and about Is It Fascism?  by Daniel Trilling in the current London Review of Books:  Excerpts:

Like [Christopher] Hitchens, [Richard] Seymour is a former Trotskyite; he left the Socialist Workers Party in 2013 when it imploded over allegations of sexual assault by a senior member. Unlike Hitchens, or indeed Power, whose work has taken a reactionary turn, Seymour has not moved to the right. Instead, he continues to examine the reasons that, despite the economic and environmental disruptions of our time, the right keeps winning.

This is what makes him a useful, if sometimes frustrating, guide to the present moment. Having abandoned the boosterism of the revolutionary left – ‘One more crisis, comrades, and it’s our time!’ – he practises a radical pessimism. Capitalism, in his view, isn’t just an engine for human misery, but, through the burning of fossil fuels, a threat to human existence. Capitalist democracy, ‘an inherently contradictory and unstable formation’ which asks people to forgo equality in return for the promise of rising living standards, is ill-equipped to avert it. . . He is a co-founder, with the novelist China Miéville and others, of the political journal Salvage (‘The catastrophe is already upon us,’ one of its taglines runs, ‘and the decisive struggle is over what to do with the remains’), and his style has similarities with Miéville’s gothic-futurism. Seymour aims to provoke the reader – not least through the force of his rhetoric – into thinking about what might be round the corner. His efforts don’t always land, but when they do he can throw a murky picture into sharp relief: I have come across no better encapsulation of the nature of social media than ‘participatory disinfotainment’.

In​ Disaster Nationalism, Seymour attempts to fuse the two ways of thinking about fascism – the historically specific and the continuous – to show that some version of it is emerging today. As in the 1920s and 1930s, the expansion of far-right politics clearly has some link to the capitalist cycle: voters in Europe, for instance, have tended to move rightwards in response to financial crises since at least 1870; the emergence of today’s far-right populism can be traced to the 2008 financial crash. But Seymour follows the more supple Marxists, notably Gramsci, in stressing that culture and circumstance, as much as economic interests, shape our attitudes. For Seymour, the determining factor is neoliberalism, whose ruins we continue to inhabit, as governing elites have struggled in the aftermath of the crash either to shore up the system or forge an alternative. Neoliberalism, Seymour writes, drawing on the work of the economic historian Philip Mirowski, aimed to persuade the masses ‘to abandon tribal sentiments of solidarity and accept the law of universal competition’. The result, amid soaring wealth inequality, is a ‘paranoid system’: if everyone is a potential competitor, there can be no meaningful social sphere, public services will be corrupt and inefficient, and welfare recipients will be regarded as freeloaders. This is a recipe for ‘resentment, envy, spite, anxiety, depression and rage’, whose long-term effects – in the West, at least – are declining social trust, increased loneliness and a rise in political violence, even as other forms of violent crime have fallen. The wager of neoliberalism, Seymour writes, was that if voters were treated as consumers ‘their rational choices would keep politics in the consensual middle ground’, and perhaps during the boom years they did. But many people have now come to feel that the system is rigged.

 Far-right populism, by contrast, offers what Seymour calls ‘muscular national capitalism’. Although its tools are those of orthodox economic policy – privatisation and welfare cuts for Modi; protectionism via tariffs for Trump; increased state direction for Orbán – they are being put to a very different end. Muscular national capitalism treats the economy ‘as a moral space in which it is argued the wrong people have been losing’. (The problem with globalisation, J.D. Vance said recently, wasn’t that it was unfair, but that it was causing rich countries such as America to lose their place at the top of the international pecking order.) Yet, as it turns out, its real economic benefits can be relatively meagre (average incomes in Brazil fell under Bolsonaro), since the true payoff is psychological. What far-right populists really have to offer is revenge: India’s frustrated Hindu middle classes will reap the benefits of growth if life is made intolerable for their Muslim neighbours; men in the Americas will become winners again when traditional gender roles are restored; cities in the Philippines will be regenerated if a war is waged on drug addicts; economically depressed regions of Europe will be revived by the mass deportation of refugees. The rhetorical tactics of far-right populism – the denigration of critics as traitors and Lügenpresse; the lurid claims about immigrants eating dogs; the obsession with ‘woke’ forms of social etiquette – are all ‘programmatic’, as Seymour puts it. They aim to channel the multifarious resentments of a population into a ‘revolt against liberal civilisation’; in other words, into ‘barbarism’.

Disaster Nationalism is part of a tradition that locates the roots of interwar fascism in the human psyche. The idea that civilisation makes us sick – that for all its benefits, it requires us to repress our aggressive and sexual urges, which reappear as various forms of unhappiness – originates with Freud. But where Freud focused on the individual, his successors Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm tried to understand the social character of support for fascism. For Reich, it was a form of ‘mass psychology’: the use of symbolism, emotion and sexual imagery to mobilise the people’s repressed violent urges. Fromm saw it in class terms, arguing that particular groups were drawn to fascism: authoritarians, certainly, but also defeated and dejected workers who had given up hope of social progress and put their faith in fascism’s promise of redemptive violence. Some have applied similar thinking to today’s far right: Wendy Brown identified ‘apocalyptic populists’ as a key component of Trump’s voter base in 2016, and her more recent work examines the mood of nihilism pervading contemporary political life.†

For Seymour, the key emotion of our time is resentment, fuelled by the insecurities and paranoia of class society and neoliberalism. It is an emotion we cannot do without, he notes, since it is essential to our sense of justice. We feel resentment at things we perceive as unfair and can feel it on behalf of others. But resentment can become an ‘emotional swamp’, leading in the most extreme cases to a ‘politically enabled passion for persecution’. Social media, which represents a shift in the way we communicate as significant as the rise of print newspapers was to the development of 19th-century nationalism, is an accelerant to this. Here, Seymour builds on his book The Twittering Machine (2019), which argues that the compulsive qualities of social media – its hall-of-mirrors narcissism, the dopamine hit of likes, clicks and follows – are used to manipulate our ‘fantasies, desires and frailties’ for profit. Participating in social media is to risk developing sadistic and self-harming forms of behaviour, since anger and conflict are often the quickest routes to online engagement: it is all too easy for social media users to find themselves subject to or joining in pile-ons, flame wars, trolling and other forms of online bullying. The industry has also proved a remarkably efficient conduit for the apocalyptic fantasies that sustain the far-right worldview. . . . . 

According to recent polling by the anti-fascist organisation Hope not Hate, 40 per cent of British people would prefer a ‘strong and decisive leader who has the authority to override or ignore Parliament’ to a liberal democracy with regular elections and a multi-party system. The more pessimistic people are about their own lives, the poll found, the more likely they are to support [Nigel Farage's right -wing] Reform, to believe multiculturalism is failing and to oppose immigration. 

From A Comprehensive Accounting of Trump’s Culture of Corruption the lead editorial in this morning's New York Times:

As his administration is negotiating with Vietnam to reduce the tariffs he imposed on the country’s goods, the government there is making way for a $1.5 billion golf complex outside Hanoi, as well as a Trump skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnamese officials said in a letter that the real estate project needed to be fast-tracked because it was “receiving special attention from the Trump administration and President Donald Trump personally.”

Nearly 60,000 American KIAs, 150,000 WIAs, and 2,583 MIAs, including Bill "Moon" Mullen,  The communists won the war, but capitalism and corruption won the peace.

A bad way to begin a sunny, warm Saturday in June is finishing the LRB article on fascism, reading the NYTimes editorial on Trump's corruption and defilement of the presidency, reading about the potential effect of the dispute between Trump and Musk on natioanl security and the public welfare, and writing notes about stages of decropitude on my iPhone for my upcoming appointment with Dr. Chatt.  

Banana bread, a good way to end the day