8/17/23

 Thursday, August 17, 2023

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:30, thunder, lightning, rain.  66°, high of 73°, AQI Alert until tomorrow, Canada wildfires.  Wind SW at 18 mph, 8-18/34.  1" of rain is expected over the next 24 hours.  Sunrise at 5:59, sunset at 7:51, 13+52,

Israel and Argentina, canaries in the mine shaft.  Two recent reads drive home the point.  The first is Michael Dreeben's April 11, 2023 article in JUST SECURITY What Israel’s Judicial Crisis Can Teach Us About Our Own.  The second is in this morning's WaPo:  Argentina’s angry polarization is a warning for the United States by Gabriel Pasquini.  Each essay gives a useful description of the political history of the author's country from the 1940s on.  In Israel's case, the history starts with the post-Holocaust formation of the country and continues through the development of the deep political divisions within the country that have culminated in the current extreme-right government under Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich. The curent government's plan to reduce the power of the country's supreme court has led to months of protest demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Israelis.   In the case of Argentina, the description starts with Juan and Eva Peron and the Peronistas, the military juntas which followed them, up the present emergence of Javier Milei, who, this past Sunday, won the country’s mandatory cross-party primaries by pledging to get rid of the entire political class, dollarize the economy, abolish the central bank, dismantle any remnant of a welfare state and arm citizens. A self-defined libertarian, Milei doesn’t shy away from legalizing the sale and purchase of human organs. Yet he is also a social conservative seeking to ban abortion, crack down on crime and forbid the use of inclusive language.  According to Pasquini, Milei "represents what’s left after polarization exhausts itself without offering any real solutions: pure anger."

Israel and Argentina have both been coming apart at the seams for years, Argentina with it's history of coups and military juntas more than Israel but it's impossible not to see the profound polarization sparating Israelis from one another.  Secular/religious, Ashkenasi/Mizrahi, settlers/non-settler.  Pasquini describes the political situation in Argentina as "mutual loathing."  Is it that bad in Israel?  in the U.S.?  I don't know about Israel, but the description seems fitting for us/U.S.  

What does this portend?  Dark days ahead.  Pasquini's chilling judgment:  "In any case, Milei’s emergence signals a large part of the country’s exhaustion and exasperation with a polarized era that brought only collective failure — the grim future my friend and I thought we had escaped by immigrating to the United States.  Had we? Polarization is like a drug: After experimentation comes continued use, then a rising tolerance. The rules of caution are broken, and the unthinkable becomes possible. That was Jan. 6, 2021, in the United States: a failed insurrection instigated by a defeated president refusing to leave office. American democracy, with all its accomplishments and failings, was to be discarded into the bin of history to reject those people’s victory — as it was in Argentina over the past century."

Grass, dope, weed, gummies.  I've been living with pain and discomfort for some time now.  I can't remember when I last felt good on a daily basis.  Lower back pain, pelvic floor muscle pain, bladder pain, peripheral neuropathy, hips, knees, shoulder, arthritis (?) moving around at will from joint to joint.  Sometimes the pain is worse in the morning when I get up and then gets better as the day progresses; other times it hangs around most of the day.  Sometimes it's semi-crippling, making almost any movement painful, daunting. And the line between "pain" and "discomfort" is hardly a clear one.  In any case, I wonder whether the pain and discomfort would be helped by cannabis but Wisconsin continues to criminalize the possession of marijauna, not only for recreational use but also for medical use.  It would be great to get some reliable, expert medical advice on the use of marijuana for pain (and the related stress) reduction.  According to the latest (2019)  MULS poll, 83% pf Wisconsinite would like marijuana legalized for medicinal purposes and 59% would approve of legal recreational use, but the Republicans who control the government say no.  Simple possession is a misdemeanor, and a second conviction is a felony entailing 3+ years in prison.  I could drive to Mundelein IL(90 miles and about an hour and a half) to buy some legally and risk arrest for bringing it back home to Wisconsin, but that wouldn't solve the problem of getting good, reliable medical advice about use, composition, dosage, etc.  On top of that, there are no federal safety standards or FDA safety and effectiveness standards because marijuana remains illegal under federal law.  My primary care doc at the VA is even forbidden to advise me on use because the VA is a federal program.  Land of the free and home of the brave.  Crazy.

Middle of night dream of Milwaukee on fire.  I had a vivid dream of Milwaukee's beautiful lakefront on fire, not the beaches but the bluffs leading down to them, and the fire had spread to downtown.  A reaction to the horror in Lahaina, Maui, a climate change shock more immediately telling than most others.  1,000 missing?  😱🙏

LTMW at a feisty little female downy woodpecker holding her own against finches and chickadees trying to horn into spots on the sunflower tube.  'Wait your turn, bozo!"  The chickadees fly to the niger tube; the finches try their luck on the ground.  Now a big red-belly has arrived and he's not too eager to share either.  As soon as he departs, the finches return.

8/16/23

  Wednesday, August 16, 2023

In bed at 9:45, awake at 4, move to BRR, and up at 4:30. 59°, high of 82°, AQI=51, wind WSW at 8 mph, 3-28/34.  Sunrise at 5:58, sunset at 7:53, 13+55.

On this date last year Geri and I took Jimmy for a drive up to Port Washington past the elk farm.  Geri and Jim took a walk at Rotary Park on the lakefront.  The date for his move to Alexandria was approaching about which I had such mixed feelings.  I miss him still although I am very glad Geri has been relieved of the very heavy responsibilities she generously carried for the better part of 4 years.

Nona is spending the day with Ellis today.  Day 2 of Nona-duty.

LTMW I notice that again this morning the first visitor at the feeding station is a little downy woodpecker and then at 6:30, there is a surge of visitors but, alas, the sunflower seed tube is 75% empty meaning all that is left in the bottom quarter are large seeds and peanuts too bulky to be accessed through the metal mesh.  Also, the orange hemispheres look pretty dried out.  I better get busy. . .  Filled the feeder and replaced the oranges.

Still thinking about delusions.  I started thinking about the famous 1938 radio broadcast of Orson Wells' adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which reportedly caused thousands of Americans to believe the Earth was being invaded by extraterrestrial aliens, 'men from Mars.'  The program was written by Wells in the form of realistic-sounding news broadcasts so it is easy to see how listeners could be mistaken in believing it was a real emergency newscast.  That bizarre and scary occurrence wasn't a case of "mass delusion" because it quickly became known that the program wasn't real, just an early example of Donald Trump's favorite terms, "fake news" and "hoax."  When the truth became known to people, the belief and fear went away.  Wikipedia describes delusion thusly: "A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence."  (my emphasis added.)  Isn't that what we see with the MAGA crowd's belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen?  That Trump won 'in a landslide'?  But isn't it also true of some, indeed much, religious belief, notably the Catholic dogma of 'transubstantiation' of the 'eucharist'?  That which at one moment all our senses tell us is bread and wine becomes at the next moment flesh and blood of one who died two millennia ago even though all the sensory evidence is that bread and wine have remained bread and wine.  Isn't that delusional? Ditto the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Assumption, etc.  [Though with these dogmas I am reminded of the turkies who believed that the farmer who fed them every day was their friend until the days before Thanksgiving, i.e., the limits of Inductive Reasoning.)  BUT, we are told that delusions are to be distinguished from dogmas, or religious beliefs.  "As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs can change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence. However:  "The distinction between a delusion and a strongly held idea is sometimes difficult to make and depends in part on the degree of conviction with which the belief is held despite clear or reasonable contradictory evidence regarding its veracity."  Huh???  And later in the Wikipedia entry: "Another difficulty with the diagnosis of delusions is that almost all of these features can be found in "normal" beliefs. Many religious beliefs hold exactly the same features, yet are not universally considered delusional. For instance, if a person was holding a true belief then they will of course persist with it. This can cause the disorder to be misdiagnosed by psychiatrists. These factors have led the psychiatrist Anthony David to note that "there is no acceptable (rather than accepted) definition of a delusion." In practice, psychiatrists tend to diagnose a belief as delusional if it is either patently bizarre, causing significant distress, or excessively preoccupying the patient, especially if the person is subsequently unswayed in belief by counter-evidence or reasonable arguments." (My emphasis)  In other words, excluding religious beliefs is essentially a political judgment or decision at least so long as the religious belief does not significantly interfere with the believer's ability to function effectively in his or her world.  The shrinks who are responsible for the DSM aren't looking for a fight with all the Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hindus, et al. so religious delusions are, literally by definition, not delusions unless they interfere with effective living, e.g., earn a living, get along in society, obey civil and criminal laws, etc.  But still, with regard to 'transubstantiation', a rose is a rose is a rose, and bread and wine are bread and wine, notwithstanding the certainty and incorrigibility and impossibility of the True Believers' belief to the contrary.  For those of us 'born in the bosom of the Church', it is all explained by the reassurance that "it's a Mystery."

But I'm left wondering about the MAGA folks and their constellations of beliefs and thinking about DJT's demonic insight into pushing the right buttons, yanking the right chains, in his True Believers.  How prescient he was in January 2916 when he said "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, ok?  It's like, incredible."  What did he understand about 'his' sector of the American electorate that the rest of us did not?  What if he were to say, "I could summon, assemble, and turn loose a mob to attack the Capitol building with the senators and representatives inside, to threaten to kill my vice-president and stalk the Speaker of the House, and lead another gang to attempt to overturn a fair, legitimate election using lies, threats, and intimidation, so I could stay in power despite the results of an election ousting me, and I wouldn't lose any voters, ok?  In fact, I would gain voters."  Would we believe it?  Do we now believe it?

What is the connection between religious delusion and MAGA delusions?  How is it that so many Evangelical Protestants are so loyal to DJT?  I see that Jenna Ellis, one of the "crackpot attorneys" representing Trump after the 2020 election and an indicted co-conspirator in the Fulton County RICO case tweeted yesterday: "“The Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law. I am resolved to trust the Lord and I will simply continue to honor, praise, and serve Him. . . Even so it is well with my soul."  Praise the Lord!

8/15/23

 Tuesday, August 15, 2023

In bed at 11, following the 4th Trump indictment, up at 7:30, 2 snifters, 1 BRR.  62°, high of 74°, Beach Hazard warning, waves 3 to 5 ft, currents, AQi=73, Moderate, particulates.  The wind is N at 14 mph, 3-15/26.  Sunny day after almost 3 inches of rain yesterday.😳 The sun rose at 5:26  at 70° ENE and sets at 7:54, 13:57.

Masculinity.  There is an article in this morning's WaPo about masculinity and loneliness.  It rings true:  (1)  "It was a kind of connection that U.S. men increasingly say is missing from their lives, leaving them lonely, disconnected and, often, angry. Earlier this year, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy declared the country to be in an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” National suicide rates have risen in recent decades, and men in 2021 died by suicide at a rate nearly four times higher than women, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention."  (2)  American men’s isolation stems in large part from a pervasive cultural belief, experts say: that men should be self-reliant and hide their emotions, especially from other men.  (3)  “If a boy expresses too much emotion or too much need for connection, is too giddy, is too joyful, what we say to that boy is, ‘What are you, a sissy? What are you, a girl? What are you, gay?’” Greene said. “It’s your job to dominate those around you, or you will lose status, and that will increase the number of individuals above you who can dish out dominance to you. And what we find is that in that system, in that structure, men are constantly in competition with each other and constantly driven by this sense of anxiety.”  (4)  Going around the circle, they began to talk about what lurked in the basement. One had lost his sister a few months earlier. Many talked of fraught or violent relationships with their fathers — or of not having a father around."

Living with Geri has shown me how lonely I am, certainly since Kitty died.  I'm not lonely with Geri, quite the opposite.  She is my one friend with whom I have regular, indeed daily, contact.  What I see watching her live her life is how much continuing contact she has with her other friends, many of them almost life-long friends.  Her cousin Sue is a lifelong friend.  Her friends Kate and Tuz have been friends for almost 60 years, and  Chris for about 40 years.  Our former neighbor Cheri has been a friend since we moved across the street from her.  She is friends with both of her daughters-in-law and of course with her sons and her granddaughter.  And who am I missing?   The point is that Geri talks with these friends regularly. She calls them or they call her.  Hardly a day goes by that she is not engaged in a good conversation with one or more of them, sharing thoughts, experiences, and advice.  The only person with whom I had a friendship like Geri's was my sister Kitty, who has been gone a year and a half now.  For the last several years of her life, we started each and every day conversing with each other by early morning text messages, usually long exchanges.  We grew up together sharing life in our tiny, one-bedroom, basement apartment with our father suffering from post-war PTSD, alcoholism, depression, withdrawal, and no emotional room in his life for his children. and a loving, supportive and protective mother suffering from her own PTSD after being raped at knife-point in our apartment when I had just turned 6 and Kitty had just turned 3.   Kitty and I shared just about everything, thoughts and experiences, fears and long-suppressed emotions which our conversations would occasionally revive.  We knew each other well, as well as any two people can know each other; we knew each other's spouses well, and each other's children.  And we loved each other deeply, probably as deeply as any two not-married people can love each other.  For a short while after she became so sick with her COPD that she could no longer respond to my morning messages and even after she died, I continued to send her morning messages as if she were still receiving them.   I knew she was gone of course and with her a huge part of my emotional life, but I pretended to hold on to her and to hold on to all she meant to me.  But, melodramatic or not, a part of me died with her.  I've been grieving the loss of her for about 2 years, pre-grieving as I knew her death was approaching, and I speak with no one about it.  Maintaining this journal is a sorry outgrowth of her death, a solipsistic indulging of the need to express, to vent, the big difference being that no one reads it but me.   Stiff upper lip, old man.  Suck it up.  Shake it out.  Shape up or ship out.  Man up, Marine.  Get over it.  Big boys don't cry, and all that.  If I am to die before Geri, which is likely though never certain, she, thank God, will be supported by her wide circle of good and intimate friends, and family of course.  If, God forbid, she should die before me, I will largely be alone.  Andy and Anh will do their best to provide emotional support but they have three children growing into adulthood as well as their demanding jobs, and Sarah is on another continent.  I think I know how the story ends.

Knowing where I am now as an old man, I have many regrets about not preserving, cultivating, and nourishing friendships, both male and female, during my life.  At best I was much too casual about some;  at worst, I was callous.  I developed a habit of introversion early in life as a defense mechanism in living with my father and under the cloud of the terrible crime that occurred in our home and I still want to turn inward and clam up when faced with emotional or personal difficulties.  It's a form of cowardice, easy enough to understand for a child dealing with an unloving, off-putting father and domestic trauma, but harder to countenance in an adult lacking the courage to deal directly with emotionally challenging situations.  In any case, I am paying the price for this personality flaw in my old age.  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Holy Days, politics, and mass delusion.  For Roman Catholics, today is the Solemnity of the Assumption.  According to the Catholic Catechism:  “…The Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians: In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition, you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death” (CCC 966).  

Our friend Katie McManus on the MULS faculty told me of being at a gathering of Catholic friends when one was reminded that the day was a Holy Day of Obligation, the Feast of the Assumption, and explained it referred to the BVM being 'assumed bodily' into Heaven, plucked as it were from this orb to the Beatific Vision.  The friend asked "Are we supposed to believe that?" and was told, "Yes, you have to belief it; it's a dogma."  His reply was, "Well, I may have to believe it, but I don't have to think about it."   I skip all the questions that the idea of 'the Assumption' gives rise to, but let's add it to the idea of the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Birth,  Transubstantiation,  Jesus's Hypostatic Union (True God/True man) Papal infallibility, Indelible marks on the soul (baptism & confirmation), the 3-in-1 Holy Trinity, and so on.  These are all dogmas, 'truths' which Catholics are religiously required to believe.  Presumably, every devout Catholic believes all these dogmas and many more.  Everybody who is not a devout Catholic thinks these people are nuts, or more nicely, deluded by their religion and self-deluded.  Catholics think Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Muslims are deluded.  

These are all mass delusions, irrational beliefs shared by millions of people.  Religious mass delusions being so common, why is it surprising that we are experiencing political mass delusions in the era of Trump?  I suppose there is at least one big difference between the two: religious mass delusions being a shared trust in various religious authorities or traditions (the Church, the Bible, the Koran, etc.) and current political mass delusions seem to be based mainly on shared distrust of political and social authorities, but I suppose that thinking is simplistic.  Trust and distrust always involve their counterparts, to trust the Bible is to distrust those who deny the authority of the Bible.  To distrust the FBI, the DOJ, the media, university elites, and all socialists, globalists, etc. is to trust those who share one's distrusts.  And I suppose we all share various delusions with many others, e.g., the thought that we fight wars to 'defend freedom'.

In any event, I fear that mass delusions among the MAGA crowd will lead to violence between now and November 2024.  If we are lucky, we will just live through what Geri accurately called the upcoming shitshow, charges and countercharges, vituperations, mutual hatreds without firebombs, explosives, bullets, and riots.  Unlikely.

Vehementer Nos, Pope Pius X, February 11, 1906.

"The Church is by essence an unequal society comprising two categories of persons, the pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful.  So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members towards that end.  The one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led and, like a docile flock, to follow the pastors."

Letter from Lord Acton, April 5, 1887

"If there is any presumption, it is . . . against the holder of power, increasing as its power increases . . . Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority but still more when you superadd the tendency, or the certainty of corruption by authority.  There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

8/14/23

 Monday, August 14, 2023

In bed around 8:15, in BRR twice, awake at 3:02, up from BRR at 4:45, it rough night, nasty minnows in the bucket: thoughts of world vulnerability, collapse, doom.  66℉, high of 68°.  Severe weather: beach hazards, waves 5 to 9 feet, also Flash Flood watch, 2 to 4 inches of rain expected😨.  AQI=25.  The wind is 9 mph off the lake, 3-18/26.  DPs 59-64.   Sunrise at 5:55, sunset at 7:56, 14 hours of daylight.

What are you, nuts?  A not uncommon expression in my younger days, usually spoken affectionately.  I'm asking it of myself in my old age.  The metaphors of thoughts darting around in my head while half-awake 'like minnows in a bait bucket' or dashing to and fro like a caged squirrel aptly describe my brain.  This morning the thoughts that stayed with me on full awakening were of our vulnerability because of our total reliance on technology, especially computer technology.  I had a thought of being on a hill overlooking LA and the city going dark, not just from lack of electricity but from the destruction of the internet, of 'the cloud.'  Food, water, gasoline unavailable; savings and checking and retirement accounts disappeared.  Vague thoughts of neutron bombs able to destroy enemies through radiation without widespread blast and heat damage.  All the ways as a species we can destroy one another.  On other mornings it's bad dreams, dreams of bad experiences as a lawyer or experiences from childhood or regretful self-reflections, lost friendships that I should have maintained, my tendency since childhood to withdraw within myself and its costs,   or despairing thoughts about the social and political unraveling of America, competing hatreds, fascism, likelihood of violence, etc.  Cacophonous thoughts, unwelcome, unwanted, but like the Last Judgment mirror unpitiously (a neologism?) revealing all sins, failings, faults, and cowardices.  Not a day but something is recalled, my conscience or my vanity appalled.

Κύριε, ἐλέησον

LTMW I see a pretty little downy woodpecker as the first morning visitor to the Clausen feeding station, perched on the sunflower tube which is more than half empty.  Now a chickadee arrives.  It's a gray breezy morning with a feeling of storm in the air.   A pretty little chipmunk had climbed the shepherd's crook up the squirrel baffle that keeps her from getting to the sunflower seed tube.  They keep trying, hoping.  Now a pair of house finches arrive, one on the sunflower tube, the other on an orange.  A chickadee works on the long niger seed tube.

Maurice Ricard has a Ph.D. in cellular genetics but is also an ordained Buddhist monk who lives in Nepal and serves as the French interpreter for the Dalai Lama.  In Sunday's NYT magazine, there is an interview with him that struck home, especially in terms of my disquieting early morning 'bait bucket' thoughts.  From the interview:

OK, so I’ve been meditating twice a day for probably 15 years, and I feel as if it has improved my ability to control my thoughts and emotions instead of letting them control me. But still, sometimes I’ll walk by a mirror and have an extreme flash of self-loathing. Or I’ll get all agitated over something stupid, like finding a parking spot. Will that stuff ever go away? Well, they can. Absolutely. You know, once I was on the India Today Conclave.  They said, “Can you give us the three secrets of happiness?” I said: “First, there’s no secret. Second, there’s not just three points. Third, it takes a whole life, but it is the most worthy thing you can do.” I’m happy to feel I am on the right track. I cannot imagine feeling hate or wanting someone to suffer.  

For a while now, people have been calling you the world’s happiest man. Do you feel that happy? It’s a big joke. We cannot know the level of happiness through neuroscience. It’s a good title for journalists to use, but I cannot get rid of it. Maybe on my tomb, it will say, “Here lies the happiest person in the world.” Anyway, I enjoy every moment of life, but of course, there are moments of extreme sadness — especially when you see so much suffering. But this should kindle your compassion, and if it kindles your compassion, you go to a stronger, healthier, more meaningful way of being. That’s what I call happiness. It’s not as if all the time you jump for joy. Happiness is more like your baseline. It’s where you come to after the ups and downs, the joy and sorrows. We perceive even more intensely — bad taste, seeing someone suffer — but we keep this sense of the depth. That’s what meditation brings.

Do you ever feel despair? There’s no point. We can feel sad if we see suffering, but sadness is not against a deep sense of eudaemonia,  (A Greek word used by Aristotle to describe the happiness attained by people who base their actions on reason and morality. One scholar has drawn parallels between eudaemonia and the Buddhist concept of nirvana), of fulfillment, because sadness goes with compassion, and sadness goes with determination to remedy the cause. Despair: You’re at the bottom of the hole, there’s no way out. That’s fatalism. But suffering comes from causes and conditions. Those are impermanent, and impermanence is what allows for change. . . . We deal with our mind from morning to evening, but we spend very little attention on improving the way we translate outer conditions, good or bad, into happiness or misery. And it’s crucial because that’s what determines our day-to-day experience of the world!

What’s the wisest thing the Dalai Lama ever said to you? I remember I came out of this one-year retreat to take care of my father. (Ricard’s father was the philosopher and writer Jean-François Revel. Father and son collaborated on the 1997 book “The Monk and the Philosopher,” which consisted of a dialogue between the two on various philosophical, spiritual, and political themes.)  At the same time, I was interpreting for the Dalai Lama in Brussels. So I told him: “I’m going back to the retreat. What is your advice?” He said, “In the beginning, meditate on compassion; in the middle, meditate on compassion; in the end, meditate on compassion."

Sorry, are you wearing an Apple Watch? Yes. 

Why does a Buddhist monk need an Apple Watch? I walk in the forest. I try to count 10,000 steps to be healthy at 77 years old. I don’t do many interviews anymore, but when I do, I usually don’t put this on, because the first thing the guys say is “Why do you have an Apple Watch?”

Speaking of Buddhism, here is a jotting in this journal a year ago today:   "I watched Geri walking Lilly from County Line Road onto Wakefield Court, thinking what a beautiful sight they were, how much they give meaning to my life, and how mortal, how impermanent, we all are.  I'm getting a bit Buddhist, focusing on our impermanence, how everything and everyone we love will disappear, dust to dust. "

And Speaking of Feeling Crappy:  "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my Soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral effort to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.  This is my substitute for pistol and ball.  With a philosophical flourish, Cato throws himself upon his sword.  I quietly take to the ship."  Herman Melville, Moby Dick or The Whale, 1851.

When I was a young professor with 1st year law students, I regularly read this opening paragraph of Mody Dick to my Property Law classes some day in November of the 1st semeste with some reassuring wordssr when most of them were stressed and nevervous about their first law school exams approaching in mid-December.  I read Moby Dick many decases ago and often wonder how many people read it anymore.  With all its minutiae about whaling, it's not an easy read.

And Speaking of Accusing Half-Dreams:

Who shall deliver me?

Christina Georgina Rossetti

1830 (London) – 1894 (London)

God strengthen me to bear myself; 

That heaviest weight of all to bear, 

Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself;

I lock my door and bar them out

The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

I lock my door upon myself, 

And bar them out; but who shall wall 

Self from myself, most loathed of all?

If I could once lay down myself, 

And start self-purged upon the race 

That all must run ! Death runs apace.

If I could set aside myself, 

And start with lightened heart upon 

The road by all men overgone!

“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”

Gerard Manley Hopkin  1844 - 1889

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak this.   But where I say

Hours I mean years, mean life.   And my lament

Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent

To dearest him that lives alas! away.

 

I am gall, I am heartburn.   God’s most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

 Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours.    I see

The lost are like this, and their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

Groundhog Day

Rita to Phil:  The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

Sir Walter Scott.

Phil to Rita:  I would have thought Willard Scott.

8/13/23

 Sunday, August 13, 2023

In bed around 9:30, up at 4:20.  64℉, high of 72℉, clouding up throughout the day, AQI=27!  The wind is NNE at 8 mph, 3-10/15, DPs 60 to 63.  Sunrise at 5:54, sunset at 7:57, 14+2.

Dinner with Caela last night was lovely but it's hard to see her suffering from grief and all that entails, living with suffering.  Surviving spouses of long-term marriages carry a heavy load, a load usually not visible to an onlooker's eye but a persistent heartache and loneliness, and sometimes much more.  We don't think of it while we are living in it, but the married state is a form of continuing life therapy(I suppose 'support' is the better term, but still . . .) simply by virtue of the continuing companionship of which it consists.  In a marriage that is still living, the partners communicate with each other and help (and challenge) each other in many ways, some obvious (division of labor stuff) and some not-so-obvious.  When one or both partners experience loneliness within the marriage, the marriage is in trouble, maybe dead.  Loneliness within a marriage is easy enough to happen when partners 'drift apart' from each other, not only living very separate lives but sharing little other than the roof over their heads at night, some jointly-owned property, and perhaps their children.  Whatever togetherness married partners are fortunate enough to share ends with the death of one of the partners when the survivor is left alone, bereft, forlorn, lonely, perhaps laid low.  I think of my father when my mother died at age 51.  I think of Jimmy A. and Jimmy C. when their Nancys died.  And of course, I think of Geri and me and do so with some dread.

Othwewise by Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed / on two strong legs. / It might have been / otherwise.  I ate / cereal, sweet / milk, ripe, flawless / peach.  It might / have been otherwise.

I took the dog uphill / to the birch wood. / All morning I did / the work I love.

At noon I lay down / with my mate. It might / have been otherwise.

We ate dinner together / at a table with silver / candlesticks.  It might / have been otherwise.

I slept in a bed / in a room with paintings / on the walls, and /planned another day / just like this day.

But one day, I know,

it will be otherwise.

Love is Not Everything by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 

And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 

Yet many a man is making friends with death 

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 

. . . . . 

8/12/23

Saturday, August 12, 2023

In bed at 8:40, awake and up at 4:45 with back pain and a bad dream, law firm, no time tickets, not prepared for an upcoming trial, guilty, bad fit.  Mostly sunny day ahead but bad start,  64℉, high of 83℉, AQI=40, wind W at 10 mph, 4-11/22.  .2" of rain in the last 24 hours, heavy rain is expected on Monday.  Sunrise at 5:53, sunset at 7:59,  14+5.

 LTMW at a group of grackles glomming onto the bird feeders.  They are too big to fit comfortably on any of the feeders.   They remind me of big teenagers throwing on some chintzy 'costume' and showing up at my door trick or treating, competing with the little kids. . . .  By 10 a.m., I am wondering why I haven't seen any young mother or father pushing a baby buggy or stroller, or accompanying a youngster on a trike or bike or scooter.  Nor a walker or jogger or cyclist.  Unusual.  If this happened with the birds, I'd be thinking about a predator in the neighborhood.

Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up.  Words attributed, perhaps accurately, perhaps not, to Barack Obama while discussing Joe Biden's bid for the presidency in 2015 or 2016.  I think of those apocryphal words as I hear and read about the appointment of a special counsel to prosecute Hunter Biden.  For both Hunter B. legally and Joe B. politically, this has been a shitshow from the beginning, ab initio as judges are wont to write.  Hunter B.'s behavior in life has been mighty unadmirable.  There is not much about it to admire, except for his too-much-maligned paintings which I think are pretty good.   He reminds me of another president's son who managed some major fuck-ups in his life and took to painting late in life.  But I have a small soft spot in my heart for Hunter and always wonder how much his father contributed to the son's troubles.  I know it's presumptuous of me but I've long wondered about Joe's decision to go to the Senate after Beau's (age 3) and Hunter's (age 2) mother and sister were killed in a car-truck crash in December 1972.  Hunter had a fractured skull and other head injuries; Beau had leg and other injuries.  I wonder about the decision because the characteristic that has marked Joe's entire adult life is overweening political ambition.  It took him to the Senate at age 30 and led him to run for president in 1988 at age 46, a campaign that ended in scandals.   He considered running again in subsequent elections and did run in 2008 when he was beaten by Barack Obama.  Despite his 'aw, shucks', call me Joe, regular guy image, he has been at least as intensely driven to pursue power and prestige in Washington as any other politico and I am persuaded that it was that driving ambition that led him to the Senate rather than staying close to home with his motherless children.  Did it make a difference in Hunter's life?  Who knows, but one wonders.  Additionally, I wonder about Joe's fawning adulation of big brother Beau and what effect that may have had on Hunter.  Was Hunter always competing with Beau for his father's affection, admiration, and love, or engaging in substance abuse to numb himself to his second-class position in the family?  No need to belabor that point, but again one wonders.  In any event, Beau grew up to be the superhero in his father's eyes and Hunter became the train wreck.  How much did Joe contribute to both?  One can only wonder. 

In any event, Joe now is standing by his son and that may be commendable.  But was it so commendable to publicly write off Hunter's daughter, Joe's granddaughter, to deny that she even was his granddaughter until after Hunter and the girl's mother had worked out their child support settlement, including that provision that the girl's name would not be 'Biden'?  Was that provision designed to ensure that she could not use the Biden name to seek fame and fortune the way her father did?  And what is the point of Joe's public protestations of Hunter's innocence of the charges being pursued against him, including the tax and gun charges which he was willing to admit as part of his plea deal with the U.S. attorney (and now Special Counsel)?  "First of all, my son has done nothing wrong.  I trust him and I'm proud of him."  Nothing wrong???  Joe has long had a big problem with truth-telling, about his academic record, his visits as VP to Afghanistan, and lots of things.  But to say of train-wreck Hunter that he "has done nothing wrong" is stupid, not particularly helpful to Hunter, and politically damaging to Joe. 

If only he would drop out of the presidential race and give another younger and more appealing Democrat a chance, but that is wishful thinking.  He has wanted to live in the White House most of his adult life and nothing is going to deter him from trying to hold on to it until he is 86 years old, not even the prospect of Donald Trump regaining it with all that that portends.

Mike Drew has died at age 90.  He was the TV critic, notably the local TV critic for the Milwaukee Journal.  He started with the Journal in 1961 and wrote columns for 43 years.  He stayed on writing his columns in 1995 when the Journal and its local competitor, The Milwaukee Sentinel, merged into the Journal-Sentinel.  The news story about his death reminded me of the tremendous changes that have occurred in local journalism, both broadcast and print, since I came to Milwaukee in 1959.  I wasn't aware of it then, but the Sentinel employed two courthouse reporters, one for the state courts and one for the federal courts.  Today, there is probably one Journal-Sentinal reporter whose beat includes local courts, but not exclusively.  He or she may also cover city or county governments.  The difference shows up in the reporting or rather the lack of reporting.    Reporters rely on "sources" and establishing source-relationships requires contact, frequent contact.  For courthouse reporting that may or may not include schmoozing with the judges, but also includes schmoozing with clerks, bailiffs, attorneys, sheriffs and police officers, and anyone with a sense of what is happening where and with whom or is about to happen.  The wider the reporter's beat, the fewer are the opportunities to develop source-relationships.  Newsrooms have been decimated since the arrival of the internet and 24-hour cable news.  It shows in the lack of local reporting.  Dana Milbank's column in yesterday's WaPo was about the local newspaper in Rappahannock County, Virginia, where he now lives.  It is thriving with a lot of very granular and personal local reporting but does so with the financial support of a couple of non-profit helpers.  It's a tough world out there for local news and Mike Drew's death reminds me of that.

Hallucinating Ugly Trump Thoughts.  The judge in Trump's January 6th case, Tanya Chutkan, is just as savvy and judicious as the judge in the Mar-a-Lago case, Aileen Cannon, is the opposite.  She has made it clear that there will be punitive consequences if Trump engages in conduct that threatens or intimidates witnesses or jurors.  It is virtually impossible to imagine that Trump will desist from his normal name-calling and threatening bombast because of the judge's warnings.  It seems probable that the judge will be tempered in her imposition of sanctions on Trump, which is to say it is highly unlikely that she will find him in contempt and have him incarcerated on his first or perhaps second violation of her orders or of the conditions of his release from custody pending trial.  She will probably order him into court and admonish him to cease & desist, etc., and perhaps impose substantial fines for each of his acts deemed violative of her orders and/or conditions of release, but it's unlikely she will put him behind bars except as a last resort.  What I am wondering is whether Trump wants to push her to revoke his release, whether he is willing to spend some time behind bars to trigger the political and social upheaval that his incarceration would provoke and perhaps to provoke a  conflict between the court and the Secret Service over the conditions of his incarceration.  AND provide an occasion for getting to the D.C. Court of Appeals and ultimately to the Supreme Court via an interlocutory habeas corpus proceeding, keeping in mind that there are few interlocutory appeals permitted in federal criminal cases.  I can't imagine all the possibilities that might eventuate but, from Trump's point of view, anything that would come out of the Roberts/Trump court would likely be more favorable to Trump than would be the case with Judge Chutkan unimpeded by corrupt, politically-motivated superiors.  If Trump were to be found in contempt and jailed, with the whole world watching, he could count on being handled with kid gloves by his guards (including Secret Service agents).  Would there be riots in the streets, violent gatherings akin to January 6th?  I think there would be, not at the Capitol but at federal courthouses and other facilities around the country.  Would we see something akin to the Oklahoma City bombing of the federal courthouse there?  or some less lethal and destructive attack on federal facilities?  I think we could count on it.  How would the federal government respond?  How would Joe Biden respond?  How would the American people respond?  Biden as the nation's chief magistrate, law enforcer, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces would have to get involved personally.  He wouldn't be able to take the 'hands off' attitude he has taken with respect to the Special Counsel investigations and prosecutions and with the DOJ's dealings with Hunter Biden.    Perhaps Biden would emerge from the awful disruptions looking magisterial and Churchillian, but I rather doubt it.  I suspect that one way or another his already low approval ratings would dip even further and that he would be held responsible for the nation's chaotic condition and deepening polarization.  Trump and his people were not able to bring the government down on 1/6/21 but they might bring Biden's government down simply by getting himself thrown in jail by Judge Chutkan.  But of course I'm just hallucinating all this, amn't I?

8/11/23

 Friday, August 11, 2023

In bed around 9:30, awake at 6:30,  up at 7:00, 5 pss, 3 brrs w/back pain.  69℉, high of 83℉, AQI=58, Moderate, wind S at 7 mph, 3-15/26, some rain possible this morning and more this afternoon, not much, DPs in the 60s all day😾.  The sun rose at 5:53 and will set at 8:00. 14+7.

Another Camille.  I painted another Camille Claudel on an old canvas I had salvaged, a 'paintover.'  I wondered if I was like the definition of an idiot, one who repeats the same behavior over and over and expects a different result, except of course I am not expecting the same result, but rather different results.  It's an interesting experience, one I am enjoying.