9/19/23

 Tuesday, September 19, 2023

In bed at 10:40 and up at 6:40. 59°, high of 66°, cloudy, 60% chance of rain, AQi=22, wind S at 9 mph, 4-13/21,  The sun rose at 6:35 and will set at 6:54, 12+19.  It was a dark and dreary morning . . .

It's their job.  There is a report in this morning's WaPo on the new movie "The Zone of Interest" by director Jonathan Glazer.  The film depicts the lives of Nazi commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höss, his wife and children.  They lived in a 'dream house' with a beautiful garden that abutted the wall on the other side of which was the death camp. Glazer said he wanted to depict the Nazi's running Auschwitz as mere mercenaries: "They're doing it because it's their job.  It's a career path for them. . . This is a movie about how anyone can be evil."  Glazer's statement remined me of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's lines from The Gulag Archipelago: 

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil. 

and

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

I don't usually read the readers' comments following newspaper articles but I do I guess that I may learn something from them, and I did with this article.  One reader commented:

While the following may not be quite on the same level as Rudolf Höss, consider:

1) The tobacco company CEOs, executives, propagandists, and advertising personnel who have promoted death and illness...because it's their job.

2) The petroleum industry folks who have sewn lies about climate change and damaged, perhaps irreparably, our planet...because it's their job.

3) The Sackler family and similar folks in various pharmaceutical industries who have promoted addictions and death and who conspire to keep the average person from getting affordable drugs...because it's their job.

4) The thousands of CEOs, executives, and workers in the American food industry who promote ultra-processed junk that sickens and kills millions of Americans...because it's their job.

5) The many politicians who deny necessary medical and social services to their constituents...because it's their job, it keeps them in power, and it helps them rake in money.

And so on, and so on. 

The article and this reader's comment remind me of the ubiquitous problem of moral complicity in modern life and call to mind my own complicities, notably in all the killling that we engaged in, directly and indirectly, in Vietnam.  We did it because it was our job.  We were Marines, first to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean. . . In the snow of far-off Northern lands and in sunny tropic scenes, you will find us always on the job  the United States Marines. Of course we were told we were 'doing our duty' and 'defending freedom' and "helping a young, struggling domocracy" but it was all 'happy horseshit,' the term we used to describe the propaganda we heard from Washington and Saigon, in Stars and Stripes, and on Armed Forces Radio.  And LBJ's and Robert McNamara's happy horseship was followed by Nixon's and Kissinger's - Peace with Honor.  We operated under the delusion that if we just killed, maimed, burned, and poisoned enough of the Vietnamese, they would give up and our government, supported by its corporate capitalist owners, could dictate what kind of government the Vietnamese would have, whether they wanted it or not.  So we all 'did our bit' to contribute to the killing, maiming, burning, and poisoning, while Brown & Root, McDonald Douglas, and Dow Chemical reaped the profits.   What are we to think of our complicity now? 

Covid-19.  A year ago today I received my 3rd covid vaccination, shortly after Joe Biden stated 'the pandemic is over' even though hundreds of people were dying each day, mostly old, mostly unvaccinated, mostly with underlying morbidities.  Now I'm waiting to schedule my 7th, the monovalent one designed to reduce hospitalizations and deaths from the most common variant currently.   I received my 2nd bivalent booster in April.

L'amour existe is a 19 minute French documentary from 1961 that I watched today on OVID.  It's a depressing view of the suburbs of Paris.  One part of the film is about the class distinctions in French society, including these stats:  Keystrokes struck by a typist in one years: 15 million, Shortage of playing fields and sports grounds, 75%, Shortage of kindergartens, 99%, High schools in all towns along the Seine, 9, in Paris, 29,  Working classs children attending university, 3%, Attending the University of Paris, 1.5%, Working class children in medical school, 0.9%, In liberal arts, 0,2%, Theaters in the Paris suburbs, O, Concert halls, 0, etc.  I wondered what the stats would be in modern America.

Then I watched another French documentary only 10 minutes long, made in 1962, one year later, about life in Paris, titled "Paris, a Winter's Day,"  The opening quote: 'Nothing is more beautfiul than Paris, if not the memory of Paris.'  Described by OVID as "a love letter to living in Paris, even on a bitterly cold winter's day," but neither film paints a very pretty picture of life in and around Paris.

9/18/23

 Monday, September 18, 2023

In bed     Fell asleep on tvr recliner watching something or other, went to bed later and was up at 6:40 with a nasty PITA, 51°, high of 66°, mostly sunny all day, AQI=26, wind NNw at 7 mph, 4-8/12. 0.15" of rain in the last 24 hours.  The sun rose at 6:34 and will set at 6:56, 12+22.

Sunrise at 7:40 over Pandlhaus, 87° ENE

Timeanddate.com tells us that by 7:20 a.m. in Milwaukee, the sun's direction was already 94.5° ESE at an altitude of 7.82°, moving south toward its meridian (180°S) at 12:45 CDT, 93.416 million miles away, and that our next equinox will be on September 23 at 1:50 a.m.  We ae spinning around the earth's axis at about 575 mph and orbiting around the sun at an average orbital speed of 66, 616 mph, or 18.5 miles per second.  Things to think about with my first cup of coffee.

What Americans can afford and can't afford.  A Marine pilot ejected from his F-35 fighter/attack aircraft over South Carolina, parachuting safely to the ground, but the aircraft can't be found.  Each F-35 costs $135.8 million; the F-35 program cost is $1.7 trillion.  The renovation plan for the Brewers' American Family Stadium is $600 million.  The U.S. provides about $4 billion in aid to Israel, a wealthy country led by a fascist apartheid government.  Since 1978, the United States has provided Egypt, led by dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with over $50 billion in military and $30 billion in economic assistance, including $1.3 billion in military aid for its military dictatorship recently approved by the Biden administration.

The number of children living in poverty in the United States more than doubled in 2022, according to new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Sept. 12, the biggest increase since it began using its current method to count them. In 2021, 5.2% of children were living in poverty. In 2022 that figure was 12.4%, or about 9 million children.  An uptick in the number of children living in poverty had been widely expected, because of the expiration of the enhanced version of Child Tax Credit program (CTC) that had been instituted in July 2021 as a means of defraying the financial burden that the stay-at-home measures had imposed on parents. 

The federal government provided states with nearly $24 billion in stabilization funds to keep child care services afloat as part of the American Rescue Plan of 2021.  That program expires at the end of this month.  More than 70,000 child care providers who benefited are likely to close as a result of lost funding, according to estimates from The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank. That would affect 3.2 million kids and slash $10.6 billion in revenue from lost worker productivity as parents reduce hours or leave jobs in the scramble to find new care.

My FB post this morning re: A Photo Can Tell the Truth About a Lie. Or a Lie About the Truth.

Each Monday, the New York Times publishes another essay by Margaret Renkl and each Monday I am grateful for it.  Today she writes about the almost unimaginable cruelty of the South's history of racialized chattel slavery, cruelty the scope and inhumanity of which we cannot apprehend from our contemporary vantage points, but which is increasingly well-documented in so many historical studies.  Nazi Germany's slave labor camps were never euphemized as 'plantations' just as American Southern plantations are never accurately called 'slave labor camps.'  And few of us apply the term 'apartheid' to America's long history of racial oppression, preferring the softer term 'segregation.  'Many modern studies also reveal slavery's significant role in the development of American capitalism and of the predominating role of Race in our social, economic, and political life today.  Margaret Renkl was born and raised in Alabama and lives in Nashville, a Southerner through and through, but she confesses to a deep ambivalence about the South.  She has written: "People can hardly help loving the hands that rocked their cradles or the landscapes that shaped their souls, but I doubt there’s a single writer in the South for whom life here isn’t a source of deep ambivalence. . . What if being a Southern writer is foremost a matter of growing up in a deeply troubled place and yet finding it somehow impossible to leave? Of seeing clearly the failings of home and nevertheless refusing to flee?"   Its history is so dark and so bloody and its historic and contemporary politics so reactionary. perhaps one can understand why some Northerners almost wish the South had won the Civil War and gone its separate (and ultimately doomed) way.

Marriage is a 4 part mini-series on BBC starring Sean Bean and Nicola Walker.  It depicts the relationship between husband Ian, recently made 'redundant' at his long-term job, and wife Emma, a solicitor, and their daughter Jessica, a small-time singer-songwriter.  I watched all 4 episodes, in large measure because of Nicola Walker, of whom I've become a big fan, and Geri watched the first two, in part because she wasn't feeling well and went to bed early.   There isn't much of a plot and what there is of plat and dialogue moves very slowly, very slowly.  Ian and Emma love each other and love their daughter Jessie, and each reciprocates the love they receive, but there is precious little communication within the family.  Both Ian and Emma seemed pretty constipated emotionally, in part because of the hurt they experienced when their son Nickolas was born prematurely at 6 months and died, perhaps in Emma's arms.  They speak in shorthand, single words or sentence fragments conveying enough meaning to be read by the other.   Emma is wrapped up in her work at a law firm run by a very nasty 'senior', who is younger than she is, but her work is never seen as meaningful or satisfying for her, rather than simply a way of filling the hours in her otherwise empty life.  At the conclusion of episode 4, she and Ian are in bed and he says to her: 'I know I've been a bit dark recently' to which she sarcastically but not cruelly replies "Really, I hadn't noticed."  He says "It's all a bit pathetic, I know, when you've got your job and all your amazing ideas and ambitions --' and she replies "Oh, but, . . . God . . .it's all just . . .I keep scraping at the world, trying to find something, but there's only you."  Ian replies, "That a good thing, yes?" and she says "Of course", kisses him goodnight, and they fall off to sleep as the square dance theme music plays - 'to the side, to the side, and around, to the middle end.  To the side, to the side, to the side, around.  Through the middle end.  Allemande left and . . ."  which seems to define their way of dealing with much of the stress in their lives, certainly including the death of Nicholas.  At one point, daughter Jessica urges Emma to be more open about her life and her emotions and Emma nods compliantly but keeps her eyes on her laptop on which she had been reading and answering her work emails.  When Jessica asks about her reaction to Nicholas's death, Emma weeps into her hands but says nothing.  

    The story reminded me of my own birth family, and especially of my father and his side of the family among whom the family motto seemed to be "the less said, the better."

9/17/23

 Sunday, September 17, 2023

In bed at 11, up at 7:30, let Lilly out at 3:40 and now again, 60°, high of 67°, cloudy, AQI=41, wind NNE at 10, 3-14/21, 0.2" of rain in overnight, little more expected today.  The sun rose at 6:33 and will set at 6:58, 12+25.

Dinner with Caela was great, solid conversation all evening.  She reminded me of my losing argument in 1985 before the Wisconsin supreme court in Emery v. Emery, a case she had handled pro bono at the trial court before Leander Foley, where she lost, and the court of appeals, where she won.  Emery had been charged with capital murder in Texas, found guilty, and sentenced to death.  The only witness against him was his former wife who had divorced him before the trial so she could testify against him despite the marital testimonial privilege in Texas evidence law.  She served him by publication in Milwaukee though she knew he lived in Minneapolis and the issue was whether the divorce court ever acquired personal jurisdiction over the husband so as to make the divorce valid.  The supreme court majority said it had, with C.J. Shirley Abrahamson writing a stinging dissent to Roland Day's majority opinion: "We should have never accepted review of this case. It does not fit within our criteria. The case involves the application of settled law to an unsettling case.  This case is better understood if the reader is aware of the following information in the court file:  "Jeffery Emery is facing a murder charge in the State of Texas punishable by death. Deborah Emery is the State's key witness against Jeffery Emery with regard to the pending murder charge. If the Judgment of Divorce is declared void, then, under an exclusionary rule of evidence under Texas law Deborah Emery could not testify. Society as a whole would be jeopardized if the State of Texas is not allowed to present its best evidence, the testimony of Deborah Emery, against Jeffery Emery." Deborah Emery's petition to this court to review the decision of the court of appeals, p. 6."  Abrahamson's dissent was a public rebuke of Leander Foley and her colleagues in the supreme court majority, one of the reasons so many of her judicial colleagues feared and disliked her.  On the other hand, this was just one more case in which a duly constituted court of law simply ignored the 'controlling law' to reach a result the majority desired notwithstanding the law.  So much for "the rule of law."  It was 38 years ago that I handled the case on a handoff from Caela.  I had forgotten all about it till last night.  Caela's reminding me of the case also reminded me of how far back our friendship goes.

Caela is my longterm birding-buddy and it hurts to see her sad, as she described herself last night.

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime 

BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before, but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirty-five years

I lived with my husband.

The plum tree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red,

but the grief in my heart

is stronger than they,

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turn away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

Kitty.  I read a couple of articles on sibling relationships in The Atlantic yesterday, including one in the November 2018 issue entitled "Are Siblings More Important Than Parents?  How brothers and sisters shape who we are" by Ben Healy.  It concludes:

"One way or another, sibling influence is lasting. A study of more than 1 million Swedes found that one’s risk of dying of a heart attack spikes after a sibling dies of one, due not only to shared DNA but also to the stress of losing such a key figure.  Which makes sense: Most of us are different people than we’d have been if our brothers or sisters were never born. Siblings seem like they’re just there only until they aren’t."

During her long, debilitating struggle with lung disease, Kitty never seemed like she was 'just there' ; we both knew that the day was coming when she wouldn't be there and so it was.  As to his statement that "Most of us are different people than we’d have been if our brothers or sisters were never born," I can't even imagine what my life would have been like without her, from our childhood days in the basement at 7303 S. Emerald to our old age, so far apart physically and so close emotionally.  Life without her is so much poorer.

CPP is pretty nasty today.  I'm struggling with the question whether I should try to reschedule my appointment with the VA PT specialist on Wednesday.  I'm feeling some embarasment about seeing her again.   I know what the stretching exercise is so the only purpose for the visit would be "internal work."  I suppose I can ask her about chronicity, or recurrence, but going back to her seems a bit pervy.

New painting not going well.

The reference, fabulous face and look, from Modigliani movie

9/16/23

 Saturday, September 16, 2023

In bed at 9, up at 6:47. Let Lilly out.  60°, high of 72°, cloudy all day, AQI=48, wind Sw at 7 mph, 4-8/14, some rain expected.  The sun rose 15 minutes before I did, at 6:32 and will set at 7:00, 12+27 of daylight.

Dinner tonight

Like Romans in the Coliseum.  JSOnline is reporting that on Monday we will learn of a bipartisan proposal from the state legislature for a $600,000,000 plan for renovatins to the Brewers ballpark.  The financing would come from state, county, and city funds as well as from a contribution by the Brewers ownership.  The proposal contemplates an extension of the Brewers' lease until 2050.  The field opened in 2001 and I think of it as "new," like I thought of the Bucks' Bradley Center home on 6th Street "new" when, built in 1988 to replace the Milwaukee Arena, it was demolished in 2018, replaced by the Fiserv Forum.

More on Biden from Maureen Dowd in this morning's NYT.  

I’ve covered Biden for 35 years. He has always been a babble merchant, prone to exaggeration and telling stories too good to be true, saying inexplicably wacky things. It was often cleanup on Aisle Biden. So when he acts like this now, it shouldn’t be attributed just to aging. Certainly, he has slowed down. But his staff has exacerbated the problem by trying too hard to keep him in check. Americans know who Uncle Joe is, quirks and all, slower and all. Let them decide.

The president’s feelings were no doubt hurt the other day by The Washington Post column by David Ignatius, a charter member of the capital’s liberal elite, saying that Biden should be proud of “the string of wins” from his first term but not run for re-election because he “risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.”

I don’t disagree, but I doubt it will make a difference.

David Ignatius and Maureen Dowd, two big Washington libs, and 3/4th of the American public including a solid majority of Democrats, tell Biden to stand aside and let some other Democrat take on Trump.  Biden refuses.  What does this tell us about "Uncle Joe"?

Then there was Ross Douthat in this morning's paper: 

Biden got elected, in part, by casting himself as a transitional figure, a bridge to a more youthful and optimistic future. Now he needs some general belief in that brighter future to help carry him to re-election.

But wherever Americans might find such optimism, we are probably well past the point that a decrepit-seeming president can hope to generate it himself.  (My underscoring)

 How long will the country be victimized by geriatric hostage-taking?

Susan Glasser in The New Yorker:

But an exchange this week on “Morning Joe,” between Ignatius and the show’s co-host Joe Scarborough, captured the genuine concern that’s been bubbling up about the President’s standing. Scarborough told Ignatius that, in “every political discussion” he’s been having lately, when the subject of Biden running again comes up, “People say, ‘Man, he’s too old to run.’ ” And, Scarborough added, “When I say every discussion, I don’t mean ninety-nine per cent of the discussions. Every discussion.” This certainly has been my experience, as well. And, unfortunately for the White House, the anecdata are confirmed by actual data: in independent public polls lately, it’s not just fervently anti-Biden Republicans but even as many as two-thirds of Democrats who say that they consider Biden too old to serve a second term.

It seems to me that respondents are saying this not because they want Trump to win but because they want him to lose—and aren’t convinced that Biden can make that happen. Filing deadlines for the 2024 primaries are coming up soon, starting with Nevada’s in mid-October. If Biden were to drop out, he would have to do it very, very soon; the final moment of decision is at hand. It’s still not inevitable, but the Biden-Trump rematch that America seems to be dreading is very close to assured. ♦ (My underscoring)

How could anyone dislike that affable, empathetic, personal-tragedy-enduring,  great-smile-flashing Uncle Joe?  Let me count the ways.  I am reminded of the most neglected sentence of Lord Acton's famous letter in which he wrote about power tending to corrupt; that sentence is "Great men are almost always bad men."  We find it hard to think of Joe Biden as a "great man," but he is the nominal 'leader of the free world,' and the chief executive of the world's wealthiest and (in some ways) most powerful country.  So I include him within Lord Acton's taxonomy of great men and thus a bad man, driven by a lust for power, fame, adulation, and the good (expensive) things in life, like mansions and Corvettes.

Read Wallace Stegner's Carrion Spring.  Wow, what a descripton of life after a 'killing winter' on the plains of Saskatchiwan.

9/15/23

 Friday, September 15, 2023

In bed at 9:45,  awake at 4:54, up at 5:10.  55°, high of 74°, sunny much of the day ahead, AQI=22, wind SW at 8 mph, 1-12/21.  Sunrise at 6:31, sunset at 7:02, , 12+30.

The challenge of getting up and about in your 80s.  I had a hard time getting my eyes to work this morning with both eyes too dry from inactive lacrimal apparatus, as the docs call the tear system, a hard time getting my eye lids to blinkability, and a hard time focusing on anything smaller than the coffee pot, like words.  On top of that, my usual early morning nasal congestion has been hyperactive leading to a pile of used Kleenex tissues on the small end table next to my recliner.

The complexities of NFL fandom.  I was reminded of this by reading Adam Gopnik's excellent article in the current online New Yorker, "No, Not Aaron Rodgers!"  Reading it, I was reminded for some reason of the great Damon Runyon and his narrative powers though Gopnik's style is more classical with references to Hector falling to Achilles and the Trojans battling the Achaeans.  The reaction of Gopnik and his son Luke to the season-ending injury to Aaron Rodgers reminded me of just how important NFL football is to its millions of true-blue long term fans whose allegiances to their teams is personal, deep, and historical.  The game itself is interesting, entrtaining, and strategic requiring many different skills on the part of the position players, most notably the extraordinary precision skills of passers and receivers.  It's easy to get hooked and, once hooked, to stay hooked.  On the other hand, there are the serious and often lifelong injuries that are an intrinsic part of the game now, with very large, very fast athletes crashing into one another play after play, game after game, season after season.  And on top of it all, the billionaire owners like the owner of the Jets, Robert Wood "Woodie" Johnson, of the Johnson & Johnson dynasty, (Forbes' reported net worth of $3.2 billion) Donald Trump's appointee as his ambassador to the U.K.'s Court of St. James, who, like Trump himself, is known to be both racist and sexist and almost surely insensitive to the physical and mental costs of playing to his employees, the players.  After all, they are very well paid and they know what they are risking by playing in the big league.  So what's the problem?  Right?  Right.

LTMW at a plethora (Three Amigos😀) of bird visitors, especially downy woodpeckers, but also goldfinches, house finches, cardinals, and chickadees, waiting for the little red-bellied and big white-bellied nuthatches and still looking for the first snowbird.  The male goldfinches are still a bright yellow but I expect that to start changing soon.  Good neighbor John was out walking Dorothy at 6:15 this morning.  Lilly gave them a couple of admonitory but muffled 'woofs.' . . .  Thrill of the day: at 12:30, a huge flock of wild turkeys, about 20 hens and immatures, walked across our front yard.  I tried to get a photo but by the time I got up and to the window, most had passed on to the neighbor's yard.  I got the tail end of the flock, but filtered through the window screen.

And, BTW, if I had any doubt about the safflower seeds being more in demand than the black-oil sunflower seeds, this photo of the short tube feeder when I filled it this afternoon resolved any doubt.  New seeds on top, loaded with safflower seeds, the ones on the bottom, loaded in this morning. safflowers almost completly gone, sunflower seeds left.

Biden's Age, Mendacity or Confusion, Reelection Bid, and World Welfare.  The other day David Ignatius devoted his regular op-ed piece to urging Joe Biden to stand aside and let some other Democrat take on the Republican nominee for the presidency, probably Donald Trump.  I don't know whether Ignatius is a fan of Biden's but he is certainly not an enemy.  In today's WSJ, Peggy Noonan, who I daresay is not a fan of Biden's, devoted her weekly column to discussing Biden's weakness as a candidate, including references to his problem with speaking truthfully.  She raises the question all must wonder about: if Biden a serial liar, like Donald Trump, or simply an aged confabulator who gets his facts and imaginings mixed up, or as she puts it, after referring to one of his recent lies about his actions after 9/11: 

After 22 years memory might scramble things, but CNN followed up with a report on other recent false claims, citing three in a single speech last month, one of them “long debunked.” It’s possible Mr. Biden has been telling these stories so long he’s become convinced they’re true. The disturbing consideration is that while repeated lying is a characterological fault, not knowing you’re lying might suggest a neurological one.

A few years ago, Fintan O'Toole wrote a long piece in The Atlantic about Biden's lies (or mistakes, take your pick).  O'Toole's essay contributed to my inability to warm up to Biden, despite my appreciation for the politicies he has pursued in the presidency.  Biden's performance in the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill fiasco started it  In any event, here we are with him in his 80s, perhaps approaching his dotage, intent on running for reelection to a second term that would end with him at age 86, if he doesn't die, resign, or become disable and replaced before then.  This selfish, insane insistence on running again at his age only increases my antipathy towards him.  He is pulling a RBG, who insisted on staying in office so long that she gave Donald Trump his 3rd Supreme Court appointee, the religious whacko Amy Coney Barrett.  Will Biden's refusal to bow out and give a chance for election to a younger, potentially more popular Democratic candidate with a more popular vice-presidential candidate, give us a second term for Donald Trump?  I think it's highly likely and for this we ought to despise him.

As I recall, the O'Toole article on Biden made quire a point of Biden's fondness for fancy homes and fancy cars, a fondness that some might think of as a character weakness.  Peggy Noonan focuses on it, too.

I close with the fact that whenever I think of Mr. Biden’s essential nature and character I think of “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s great history of the 1988 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden’s first. . . . Thirty years after publication, it presages a great deal of what we observe each day of Mr. Biden, and it is suggestive of the origins of the Hunter Biden problems and allegations.

For one thing, Joe Biden has always been obsessed by real estate and fancy houses, and money was always an issue. On a house he would buy a few years into his first Senate term: “The house is gorgeous, an old du Pont mansion in the du Pont neighborhood called Greenville, outside Wilmington. It’s the kind of place a thousand Italian guys died building—hand-carved doorways, a curbing hand-carved grand staircase that Clark Gable could have carried a girl down, a library fit for a Carnegie. . . . And a ballroom—can’t forget the ballroom.” He bid more than he had, “but Biden never let money stand in the way of a deal. He got in the developer’s face and started talking—fast.” He got the house—he always got the houses—and thereafter scrambled to cover its cost.

He wanted it all and had a sharp eye for how to get it. There is a beautiful speech Cramer presents as Mr. Biden’s. He was sitting around a back yard in Wilmington with friends when his sons were young, and Mr. Biden asked, “Where’s your kid going to college?”  His friend said, “Christ, Joe! He’s 8 years old!” Another implied it wasn’t important.  “Lemme tell you something,” Mr. Biden says, with a clenched jaw. “There’s a river of power that flows through this country. . . . Some people—most people—don’t even know the river is there. But it’s there. Some people know about the river, but they can’t get in . . . they only stand at the edge. And some people, a few, get to swim in the river. All the time. They get to swim their whole lives . . . in the river of power. And that river flows from the Ivy League.”

A lot of hungers, resentments and future actions were embedded in that speech by Joe Biden, Syracuse Law, class of ’68.* They aren’t the words of an unsophisticated man but of a man who wanted things—houses, power, the glittering prizes—and who can’t always be talked out of them.

She is right on. 

* Very near the bottom of his class, after almost being expelled for plagiarism.  He's lied about his academic record, too.  How telling.

Coming apart at the seams.  There is a story in today's WaPo about the "Greater Idaho Movement", an initiative to redraw the border between eastern Oregon and western Idaho - "Outflanked by liberals, Oregon conservatives aim to become part of IdahoOutflanked by liberals, Oregon conservatives aim to become part of Idaho"  The situation in eastern Oregon reflects a problem throughout much of the United States today and it derives in large measure from our tendency to live in geographic areas where politically like-minded people live or, in other words, our tendency to segregate ourselves along political lines.  Of course, it's undeniable that there are few areas that are purely liberal/progressive/Democratic or purely conservative/Republican, a point about which Sarah Smarsh made quite a point in her memoir Heartland.  But it seems undeniably true that many, perhaps most, geographical areas are quite predominantly liberal or conservative, witness Wisonsin's WOW counties surrounding Milwaukee County.    Witness my own inability to imagine moving to Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, or Idaho.  What accounts for the location of state, county, and municipal borders?  Mostly historical and political factors at work when the borders were laid out plus geographical or topographical factors, especially waterways, like the Mississippi and Ohio rivers predictably serving as dividing lines between so many states.  How is it that the Upper Peninsula of Michigan remained a part of Michigan when Wisconsin was created a state out of the old Michigan Territory even though the UP is contiguous with Wisconsin and separated from 'mainland' Michigan by the Mackinaw Strait between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron?  Political and economic reasons surely.   The location of boundary lines may not be terribly important much of the time but in other times, especially times of deep political polarization, borders can become matters of life and death, as for example the Ohio River border between Ohio which was a Free Labor state and Kentucky, a slave state. Every now and then we hear talk of secession from Texas radicals, including Governor Greg Abbott and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green has suggested that the country needs some sort of 'divorce agreement' between Red and Blue states and just recently went further and urged states to 'consider seceding' from the Union.  Of course, states seceding from the Union is no more possible now than it was in 1861 but there is a very real issue of how we all are to live together in one polity when we are as radically politically polarized as we are now.  Our federal government has in large measure lost the capacity to govern effectively.   How do we go on like this with so many needs requiring some sort of governmental action - like immigration, climate change, gun violence, and what have you.  The future for the Un-united States looks pretty grim.
 

 

9/14/23

 Thursday, September 14, 2023

In bed at 9:30, awake at 4:58, and up at 5:20.   50°, high of 68° under clear skies and AQI of 18, wind Nw at 4 mph, 2-10/14.   Sunrise at 6:30 at 85°E, sunset at 7:03, 12+33, losing more than 2.5 minutes/day.

Birdcast,  a product of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Colorado State University. tells us that 337,000,000 birds, more or less, were migrating south last night as the daylight diminishes and the temperatures cool.  Some start leaving their breeding grounds for their wintering grounds as early as July while others wait until October.

LTMW at 6:50, I see a tiny, immature downy woodpecker who seems to have set up shop on the sunflower/safflower feeder.  He's been there for several minutes, pecking away like crazy, but appearing to do no eating of seeds.  The tube is about 2/3rds full and continues to attract many chickadees while many others focus on the niger feeder.  At 7:00, the sun is just under treetop level across the street, casting its beams through the trees onto Geri's seating spot on the sofa.  The early morning sun, low in the sky,t enhances the beautiful red coloring on the male house finches who no longer seem to be paired up with their female nesting partners now that their yooung'uns have left their nests.  The woodpeckers pretty much rule the roost when they are perched on the short tube, with 4 or 5 finches and song sparrows/siskins perched on top of the shepherd's crook waiting for the woodpecker to finish and fly away.  At 8:30, a young mother and a friend walk briskly along Wakefield Court with a baby in a stroller and their dog.  They are followed by another young couple with another stroller and child and dog.  Norman Rockwell scenes.  Life among the privileged.

How the times and tastes have changed.  While puttering around in my basement sanctuary a few days ago, I turned on Pandora and opted to listen to the Patti Page station, just because I nostalgically felt like listening to some of her lovely songs.  "The singing rage, Miss Patti Page."  One of songs that played was "Mockingbird Hill" which was a big hit in early1951 when I was 9 years old.  I remember it well, hearing it often on WGN or WMAQ or whatever radio station happened to be playing on our kitchen radio in those days.  I've been perseverating a bit on the song each of the last few days and thinking how incredibly corny the lyrics seem today and of how unthinkable that it would get a play on today's pop music stations.  In 1951, it reached #2 on the popular music charts.  How the times change.

Tra-la-la, tweedlee dee dee it gives me a thrill

To wake up in the morning to the mockin' bird's trill

Tra-la-la, tweedlee dee dee

There's peace and goodwill

You're welcome as the flowers on Mockin'bird Hill

When the sun in the mornin' peeps over the hill

And kisses the roses 'round my windowsill

Then my heart fills with gladness when I hear the trill

Of those birds in the treetops on Mockin'bird Hill

When it's late in the evenin' I climb up the hill

And survey all my kingdom while everything's still

Only me and the sky and an old whippoorwill

Singing songs in the twilight on Mockin'bird Hill

(I'm imagining these lyrics delivered Hip Hop style!😀  Cool! or perhaps Taylor Swift in a revealing sequined costume trilling 'Tra-la-la, tweedlee-de-de 😳)

Covid boosters and reactionary politicians.  I have had 6 COVID vaccinations to date and plan to get my 7th, the second bivalent booster, not later than next month.  Ditto an RSV vaccination.  We are almost 3 and 1/2 years into the covid pandemic and I have yet to become infected, for which I am grateful and for which I credit mostly the available vaccinations.  I was vaccinated against polio as a child and again in the Marine Corps.  In my 4 years of active duty in the Marine Corps, I received more vaccinations than I can remember, especially before deploying to Vietnam.  I get the flu vaccine every year and have been vaccinated against pneumonia and shingles.  I have never come down with any disease against which I have been vaccinated, with the possible exception of a possible case of flu a couple of years ago, in which the symptoms were very mild, which I attribute to the vaccination I had previously obtained.  I believe in and am thankful for vaccines.

    Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis and the Florida state health commissioner he appointed are doing all that they can to discourage Floridians from getting vaccinated.  "In a call live-streamed on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo repeated comments made in a live event last week in Jacksonville, Fla., and argued there isn’t enough evidence that the booster’s benefits outweigh any risks. “I will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective,” DeSantis said in a statement after the call with Ladapo and other doctors, which opened with the title “No way FDA.”"

    Words fail me.

Thoughts on watching motion hearing in Georgia election case.  (1) The 34 year old freshman judge in the case is very impressive, very capable, very professional.  (2) I can't help thinking the case is too big and fear that it will become a train wreck at some point(s), notwithstanding the best efforts of the judge. (3) . I am SO thankful to no longer be in the litigation business.

Starting a New Painting.

Reference photo from Modigliani movie

Outline sketch with colored chalk

Initial rough-in

9/13/23

 Wednesday, September 13, 2023

In bed around 11, unable to sleep, fractured night with several pss and 1 brr, and awakened at 8:09 by a spam call.  55°, high of 63°, partly cloudy, AQi=21😀, wind N at 9, 2-11/13. 0.15" of rain last night.  The sun rose at 6:28 at 84°E and will set at 7:05, 12+36.

Binging Unforgotten.  We binged the last 4 episodes of Season 3 of Unforgotten last night, with me not getting sleepy for some reason and even unable to fall asleep at 11, an unlikely and unwelcome occurrence but, hey, we got to find out whodunit and to watch the great acting of Nicola Walker all night.  We have rewatched seasons 2, 3, and 4 now, leaving season 1 with Nicola Walker and the new season 5 with her replacement.  With each re-viewed episode, my admiration for her acting really challenging roles increases.

LTMW at our lawn guys doing their usual excellent job mowing, trimming, and blowing, and at a lot of action on the short and tall tube feeding stations despite the noisy lawn machines: finches, chickadees, et al.  A couple of English sparrows show up and they look kind of chubby and chunky compared to the sleek chickadees and nuthatches and cardinals.  I'm wondering whether I should start filing the suet cake baskets again or wait till it gets colder, perhaps when the snowbirds show up again.  A huge, extra-long semi just pulled onto Wakefield Court and is backing up into Mequon since there is no exit and no turn-around from our cut-de-sac.  I have such admiration for the drivers of these big rigs negotiating the backups.  It must take a lot of training and skill.  Back in the days when I hauled my 16-foot Lund Mr. Pike fishing boat behind my car, I never became very proficient at backing up, especially when backing up the trailer without the boat on it.  Around 1 p.m., a couple of song sparrows show up, or are they pine siskins, my perrenial uncertainty?

Petty, shameful schadenfreude.  I confess: I felt some pleasure on learning that Aaron Rodgers' Achilles tendon snapped in the Jets' opening game against the Buffalo Bills, ending his season after just 4 snaps, one pass attempted and none completed.  I also felt sympathy for him as a human being when I saw the slo-mo close-up of his calf at the moment the snap occurred, pretty gruesome.  I suppose NFL fans will be seeing him on television as the 'color man' on the Jets' announcing team, and on his favorite Pat McAfee Show where he apparently likes to pontificate, which I've never seen, and elsewhere.  Rodgers' two-year contract with the Jets gives him $75,000,000 fully guaranteed.  His total salaries in the NFL amount to $342,496,898 with the Packers and the Jets.  We can be sure the Jets' owners and managers obtained insurance against a season-ending injury or illness but nonetheless, they are back to the drawing board in terms of filling the QB position.  A big reason for deriving some pleasure over this high-finance boondoggle is that it may have occurred in large measure because of the Jets' ownership choice of artificial turf for their playing field.  Rodgers spent his years in Green Bay playing on grass, the famous 'frozen tundra', which is much easier on the players' bodies than artificial turf if, for no other reason, grass doesn't grow over rockhard concrete, the substrate of artificial turn.  But the artificial turf is cheaper to maintain than a grass field and thus increases the owners' profits from the brutal sport.  "Jets wide receiver and longtime Rodgers teammate Randall Cobb: “We wanted the NFL to protect the players with grass fields, but the NFL is more worried about making money. Profit over people, it’s always been the case. I’ve never been a fan of turf.”  The money-grubbing owners' money-saving, profit-enhancing choice now has cost them money with their superstar QB out for the season and perhaps for good if he chooses to retire rather than return for the next season.  Schadenfreude. The Jets-Bills game drew an average of more than 22.6 million viewers across ESPN, ABC, and other platforms, ESPN said Tuesday. It was the most-watched “Monday Night Football” game since ESPN started carrying the package in 2006.  They can kiss those numbers and those dollars goodbye.  Boo-hoo.

War Is A Racket, is a short book I picked up at the library yesterday written in the middle of the Great Depression by Marine Corps icon, Brig. Gen. Smedley D. Butler (Ret.), after he retired from the Marines.  He was a two-time Medal of Honor awardee who became of foe Big Business, and corporate America, who he accurately believed caused and profited from wars and military adventures in which the little guys fought, were maimed, and died to increase the capitalists' profits.  Butter oversaw American forays into China, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti and this is where he picked up his frequently expressed opinion that he was no more than a bully boy for American corporations, due in part to his Quaker background.  A quote:

    I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914.  I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.  I helped in the raping of a half dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.  The record of racketeering is long.  I helped purify Nicaragua for the international house of Brown Brothers 1909-1912.  I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.  In China, I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

Butler was a champion of the Bonus Marchers, World War I veterans who set up camp in Washington, D.C., demanding the bonuses they had been promised by the government.  Their Hooverville camp was attacked and disbanded on July 28, 1932, by future 'heroes' Doughlas "I Shall Return" MacArthur and George "Blood and Guts" Patton on the orders of Republican president Herbert Hoover.  Three cheers for Smedley Butler, shame on MacArthur and Patton.  But one wonders when Butler's eyes were opened to corporate control over the U.S. government including perhaps most significantly governmental decisions to wage war or otherwise use lethal force to advance business interests.  When did he see the light?

Added some color to Camille's collar