10/22/23

 Sunday, October 22, 2023

In bed at 9:30 up at 6:47, 39°, high of 53°, AQI=18, wind NNW at 10, 3-13/20, 0.2" of rain in last 24 hours.  Sunrise  7:13 at 104°ESE,   5:58, sunset at 256°WSW.  A decent night's sleep, maybe 1 hours on lzb.  Had a warm pleasant dream about Steve K, my doppelgänger.

The euonymus across the street

New morning protocol.  The first thing I do (usually after taking care of Lilly) is to check the NYT or WaPo to see if the IDF has crossed its land forces into Gaza.  I can sense the very real possibility of "a wider regional conflict" in this situation, possibly involving nation-states, Israel of course, but also Syria, Iraq, and the big one - the U.S. and Iran.  One carrier strike force I understand, but two?  And I can't help wondering whether those two carriers - such big targets - have their own "iron dome" defenses.  I wonder what life was like in the waning days of 1939.

LTMW nearing 10 a.m. at a gang of those feisty, pesky English sparrows driving away the finches,l nuthatches, and other birds until a big red-bellied woodpecker swoops in and drives the sparrows away.  The chickadees dash in and out so fast they seem not to be bothered by the sparrows.

Treadmill.  I got on twice this morning, early, but stopped after only a few steps each time - CPP/BPS.  I'll try later.

CPP all afternoon.  In bed twice just to be horizontal. also on LZB once, all to relieve pressure on pelvic floor but not knowing whether it's efficacious.  I had only one cup of Geri's leftover decaf today, plus a Bengal Spice herbal tea, and some water, trying to deal with BPS but it probably doesn't help with CPP, or does it?  Is it all interrelated?

More on Israel, Hamas, Gaza, children.  There are more videos coming out of Gaza showing little children in shrouds, others in hospitals or being carried or walked with caring adults, parents, family members, who knows?  One image stays with me: a toddler in diapers, appearing full, with his head bandaged, holding the hand and walking next to an adult.  The Gaza/Hamas Health agency announces the number of dead and wounded periodically but who is counting?  What information can be confidently relied on in any war, including this one?  Every night and every morn / Some to Misery are born.  Every day and every night / Some are born to sweet delight. / Some are born to sweet delight.  / Some are born to endless night.  

What choices are realistically available to the Israeli government?  What it is doing now - willingly or under US pressure - provides more time for the Gazans to flee from north to south,  but to what living circumstances?  It also gives the IDF more time to plan, and Hamas more time to stage IEDs, booby traps, fortified emplacements, etc.  The delay also gives everyone more time to think, to consider costs, in blood and treasure.  It gives Hezbollah more time, too and other militarized organizations.  The fecklessness of the UN in these circumstances could hardly be clearer, both in Gaza and in Ukraine.  Will there be calls for the US to get out of the UN and to get the UN out of the US?  We can probably count on it.

Could Israel opt for so-called 'surgical strikes' within Gaza, foregoing massive infrastructure destruction?  Building to building, door to door?  I can't imagine the IDF leadership (or the political leadership) agreeing to this.

More worryingly, could Israel opt to use a dirty 'tactical nuke' to level and render utterly uninhabitable Gaza City, force all remaining Palestinians into southern Gaza, thereby shortening the Israel-Gaza border to a more defensible length?  This too seems hard to imagine unless Israel faces attacks from all sides, overstressing the IDF's ability to maintain control in the West Bank, and to defend all sectors within Israel.  This must be a nightmare situation for Biden, the State Department, and DOD, especially since it would free up Russia to use its tactical nukes in Ukraine.  What then?

The U.S. is moving a carrier strike force into the Persian Gulf in addition to the two in the eastern Mediterranean.  It seems that our entire national history has been leading up to this point, massive military force surrounding one of the globe's major sources of OIL.  Despite all the progress on green energy production, the world still runs on OIL.  OIL is still "The Prize" described in Daniel Yergin's great economic history.  If it weren't for all the OIL in the neighborhood, why would the Middle East be "a vital national interest"?

As I see this horror unfolding, I think of all my Jewish friends over a lifetime, from Wally Halperin on, and I think of the Muslim students I had at the law school, Ahmed Quereshi and especially Palestinian Othman Atta, who was seemingly universally liked by students and faculty, who was elected president of the Student Bar Association, and who invited us to a reception at his family's home to meet his beautiful wife from the West Bank, a marriage traditionally arranged by the bride's and groom's families.  I think of the shared humanity of the Israelis and the Palestinians and wonder what it really counts for.

10/21/23

 Saturday, October 21, 2023

In bed by 9:15, up at 7:04, with some CIS/CPP and feeling kinda crummy, 46°, high of 54°, cloudy day and perhaps some rain ahead, wind SSE at 4 mph, 2-25/22.  Sunrise at 7:13, sunset aat 5:59, 10+46.

My dear friend Ed told me twice while we were at Lyn's wake  on Thursday that his children had Lyn's hospital bed and equipment moved out of the house almost immediately after her death and returned the family room  to its prior condition.  He didn't put it that way exactly but that was the gist of it.  Twice he told me.  The more I remember those comments, the more poignant - and sad - they become.

Nasty CPP/PBS day.  All day.  Keeping me off the treadmill.

Finished watching the social dilemma on Neflix. "This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations."  Scary, especially for kids growing up with it, 'users' all their lives.  More scary as AI technology expands.  Orwell, 1984  (1949) and Huxley, Brave New World (1931).  Wikipedia: "Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist."  "It's not the technology that is the existential threat.  It's technology's ability to bring out the worst in society and the worst in society being the existential threat.  If technology creates mass chaos, outrage, incivility, lack of trust in each other, loneliness, alienatin, more polarization, more election hacking, more populism, more distraction and inability to focus on the real issues, that's just society and now society is incapable of healing itself and just devolving into a kind of chaos."  Tristan Harris

    I am reminded of my dear brother-in-law who used to send me insane right-wing social media crap until he sent me one evincing outrage that Nancy Pelosi was pushing a bill through the House that would preclude all military veterans, like him and me, for ever owning a firearm.  Patently unbelievable crap.  I look it up and what prompted this disinformation was Pelosi's opposition to a Republican bill that would have automatically entitled every military veteran to a concealed carry license, regardless of their background, criminal record, domestic violences history, etc.  Jim, and probably millions of other users, bought into it and was duly outraged at Pelosi (and Democrats.)  I emailed back to him the accurate information and never heard back from him.  My sister learned that he was sending that crazy NRA Republican crap and laid into him.  But he was inextricably a member of that NRA gon rights Republican tribe, wedded to it, deriving identity and meaning from it.  So it goesand so it is.  We and much of the world are increasingly in the grips of insuperable tribalism.  We are doomed.

    In 1941, Erich Fromm published Escape From Freedom about Fascism and Nazism and the psychology underlying authoritarianism.  I underlined one sentence on page 240: "The right to express our thoughts, however, eans something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own."  He anticipated our silos and the role of social media.

From Friedman interview in NYT:  "To think about Israel, I think, today, you have to hold three thoughts in your head at the same time. One is that Israel is an amazing place. What Israel has built in 100 years, in a deeply hostile environment, from science to medicine, to literature, to the ingathering of exiles, and medicine, it’s just amazing, number one.

Number two, Israel does bad stuff. Israel does bad stuff sometimes. It steals Palestinian land. It lets settlers occupy land illegally and then legalizes them. Israel does bad stuff. And third, Israel lives in a crazy dangerous neighborhood. Their neighbors are not Canada and Mexico.

Now, I have no problem holding all three of those thoughts in my head at the same time. Unfortunately, most people can’t. And so I’m always just looking in my own mind not for a knockout blow — there just aren’t any. I’m looking for the least bad that buys the most time. That’s my whole philosophy of life. Israel, do the least bad that buys the most time because there is no once and for all.  

From "Ukraine, a Sniper Mission and the Myth of the ‘Good Kill’

in this morning's NYT, by Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a story that made me think of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan:

 "Violence in any conflict is processed differently by those involved and those not. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been characterized by its sheer brutality — including cities leveled by bombardment and mass graves — and by how accepting much of the world has become of wholesale death and destruction. . . . Raptor  [a Ukrainian sniper] was working his way through the subject that sniper cultures often avoid. Few times during my deployment did I pause to consider the Taliban. At least in conversation. We conditioned ourselves that Talibs were targets and little else. Our time revolved around killing them as they killed us, and before they killed us more.

It would take years for me to realize how indoctrinated we all were. Raptor already understood — at least enough to articulate his findings to a stranger in a stairwell amid the thud of distant artillery strikes — that he was killing a human being, and trying to explain why.  For me and my comrades, all these years later, the reason we chose to kill can continue to elude us.  We found ourselves in the middle of some poorly thought-out counterinsurgency strategy, propping up a corrupt government that collapsed almost as soon as the United States left. We were protecting each other. That became a binding ideology, all the clarity we could summon in the puzzle our politicians in Washington handed us. We stumbled through exhausted, mouthing our lines, until our tours ended and we were discharged.  Now we’re discomforted by our own killings, aware of the details and the violence we committed under the bright banners of “nation-building” or “winning hearts and minds,” or whatever our officers told us as the seasons changed. In the shadow of our failures, our silence hangs over it all. [Italics mine]

Russians in Ukraine, Hamas in Israel,  U.S. Cavalry in America.  From an exhibit at the Colorado History Museum in Denver about the Sand Creek Massacre of Cheyenne and Arapahoes on November 29, 1964.

The US troops opened fire on our camp before many of us knew what was happening. They started shooting into ou tipis with revolvers, repeating rifles, and exploding artillery shells. Many died in their beds. Many more were shot and mutilated while running away. Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle made sure the soldiers saw the white flag of surrender and the US flag fiving above our camo. Another important Cheyenne chief, White Antelope pleaded with the soldiers to stop attacking the peaceful camp by singing a journey song. But he too was shot. He died underneath the flags Colorados Governor Evans said would show that we were peaceful

Soldiers bashed in children's skulls with rifle butts. Letters from witnesses tell stories of worse. They record many atrocities, including US soldiers cutting unborn babies out of their dying mothers' wombs. Cheyenne and Arapahc survivors fled or dug pits in the cresk bed where thou could hide. Some survived and told their stories to their children.

 

10/20/23

 Friday, October 20, 2023

In bed at 8:45, awake @ 1:00, onto the lzb till 1:30, and then up 'for the duration.'  Let Lilly out, 51°, high of 57°, mostly cloudy morning and sunny afternoon ahead, windy morning.  AQI=36, wind NW at 14 mph, 5-16/26, 0.05" of rain in last 24 hours (officially, not by my reckoning!).  Sunrise at 7:11, sunset at 6:01, 10+49.  Canada's wildfire season seems to be coming to a close, so perhaps it's time to stop thinking of the day's AQI.  Or perhaps not?

Yesterday's journal and some additional thoughts.  I added the last two paragraphs of yesterday's journal this morning after letting Lilly back in.

Yesterday was the first time since Tom's funeral in January that I wore my blue blazer, dress trousers, and shirt which seem to have become funereal garb.  My kippah from Congregation Sinai was still in the blazer pocket.

I was pretty apprehensive about yesterday's journey to Lyn's wake, mostly about how my body would hold up.  I hadn't driven that far, that long, that far away from home, and my bathroom in several years.  I was especially concerned about my chronic interstitial cystitis, or painful bladder syndrome and my chronic pelvic pain.  I drank no coffee all day and minimized my intake of water. worrying about the effect on my kidneys because of the Jardiance med I take for my diabetes.  I had a PB&J sandwich for breakfast before injecting myself with my weekly Trulicity which I'm not supposed to inject on an empty stomach.  I stopped at the Lake Forest Oasis on the Illinois Tollway to empty my bladder which I did again at the funeral home, arriving and leaving, and made it through the day without a significant problem. Deo gratias.  More guardian angels?  I did have back pain or discomfort throughout much of the trip but I think it was attributable to the setting on the lumbar support of my car seat which I need to tend to.  I told Geri after dinner last night that I was "wiped out" by the day and suspected I would be wiped out today.  So far, so true - relying on my trusty wooden cane a lot this a.m.

Netanyahu and Trump, Israel and U.S.,  doppelgӓngers?  From The Economist, 3/30/2019, "Binyamin Netanyahu: a parable of modern populism."

The reign of King Bibi is thus a parable of modern politics: the rise of a talented politician and a long success based on a perplexing mixture of carrying out sound policy and cynically sowing division. As his power is threatened, he has turned to railing more loudly against the free press, the judiciary and shadowy forces. Now Bibi faces his greatest danger, in the form of criminal charges for corruption. In a different age he would have had to resign, and would now be defending himself as an ordinary citizen. But he is intent on remaining in office, and hopes that voters will yet save him from the policemen, prosecutors and judges. Israeli politics is turning into a contest between genuine achievement and demagoguery on one side and the rule of law on the other. All who care about democracy should watch closely.

 In Bibi’s pessimistic view, Israel is surrounded by wolves in sheep’s clothing and wolves in wolves’ clothing. Israel can only manage conflicts, not solve them, he believes, so it must rely on an iron wall and the passage of time.

Such “anti-solutionism” risks storing trouble for the future. It increases the danger of war with Iran, or of its hardliners making a dash for nukes. The more Israel entrenches itself in the West Bank, the more its “temporary” military occupation looks like the permanent subjugation of Palestinians under a separate law, even apartheid. This is made worse by the absence of America’s restraining influence. Mr Netanyahu has warmly embraced Mr Trump, who in turn has showered him with gifts, most recently his endorsement of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. Might Mr Trump also back Israel’s annexation of bits of the West Bank, so denying Palestinians the hope of statehood? In the long run Bibi’s overt alignment with America’s Republicans and the evangelical right endangers the bipartisan pro-Israeli consensus in Washington that is the foundation of Israel’s security.

But the greatest threat from Bibi’s reign has been at home. He has kept power not just on the strength of his record but also by seeking political advantage at the cost of eroding Israel’s democratic norms. In claiming that no peace with Palestinians is possible (or desirable), members of his right-wing coalition outbid each other to pass measures asserting Jewish supremacy. Mr Netanyahu pushed for an electoral pact with the hitherto untouchable far-right Jewish Power group, which wants to annex all the occupied territories and “encourage” Arabs, including Israeli citizens, to leave. He has played us-and-them politics for so long that he has exacerbated the country’s many schisms—between Jews and Arabs, diaspora Jews and Israelis, western Ashkenazi and eastern Mizrahi Jews, and secular and religious ones. By casting himself as uniquely able to protect Israel against its enemies, he often treats those who say otherwise as wimps or traitors. . . 

Yet precisely because of these pressures, Israel offers an important test of the resilience of democracy. On April 9th [2019], Israeli voters face a fateful choice. Re-elect Mr Netanyahu and reward him for subverting the independence of Israel’s institutions. Or turf him out in the hope of rebuilding trust in democracy—and aspiring to be “a light unto the nations”. 

We know which way Israel turned on April 9, 2019, and what has resulted.  Which way will America turn on November 5, 2024, and with what results?

Will Israel use its nuclear arms?  What happens if Iran turns loose Hezbollah and its thousands of rockets on Israel's North and if Palestinians in the West Bank erupt more violently while Israel is focused on Gaza in its South?  With the IDF stretched thin in a 3 front war, will Israel, feeling an existential threat, use one or more of its nuclear weapons?  Is this why President Biden thought it was so necessary to travel to Tel Aviv, to give Netanyahu a warm hug for the world to see, even while most of the Arab and Muslim world blamed Israel and the U.S. for the attack on the El Ahli Arab Hospital?  We have thought for the last year or so that the greatest threat of the use of 'tactical nuclear arms' came from the Russians in Ukraine.  For years, a latent fear of nuclear warfare has loomed between India and Pakistan.  But today that threat lies with our ally Israel and its heretofore cold war with Iran and Iran-backed Hamas, Hezbollah, and other proxies.  As of now, Iran and its proxies are winning the political war with the Israeli-Saudi normalization process sidelined, the Arab street enraged, and the predictable horror of Israeli-inflicted mass death and destruction in Gaza looming and threatening to make Israel a pariah state.  Will Biden and his administration use American naval and air forces in the Eastern Mediterranean rather than OK Israel's use of tactical nukes?  Is this part of the reason the U.S.  deployed two carrier strike forces there?

As far as I know, neither the Israeli nor the American government has ever admitted that Israel has a nuclear weapon stockpile and Biden has made no mention of the possibility of Israel's use of nuclear weaponry if its threat level increases.  But the whole world, including Iran, knows that Israel has nukes and that it will use them if its government feels sufficiently imperiled.  I have to believe that this realization lies behind Biden's hug of Netanyahu.

Jordan out in Speakership contest.  We have dodged Jim Jordan's bullet for a 3rd time.  He was defeated yet again, with 25 Republicans voting against him.  Then the Republican caucus took a vote on whether he should continue his candidacy and he lost.  There will be a 'candidate caucus' on Monday.  So while war rages on the European continent and in the Middle East, our government functionally has no legislature for three weeks, and that's assuming their caucus can select and elect another candidate by next Tuesday, which seems unlikely.

Jordan's candidacy reminds me of an article in the current online edition of The Atlantic: :The Sociopaths Among Us—And How to Avoid Them" by Arthur C. Brooks.  Excerpts:

Very likely, this person was a “Dark Triad” personality. The term was coined by the psychologists Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams in 2002 for people with three salient personality characteristics: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and a measurable level of psychopathy. These people confuse and hurt you, because they act in a way that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one scholar aptly described the ones whose behavior shades more obviously into psychopathy, these are “social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets.”

 [My add: "I couldn’t forgive [Tom] or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."]

But at least these people are rare, right? Wrong. Dark Triads counted for about one in 14 people in an international population sample, a proportion that means all of us will meet them on a regular basis in love, in work, in politics, and—most obviously—on social media. For the sake of our happiness, well-being, and wallets, we need to understand them, learn how to identify them, and steer clear of them whenever we can—so that we can find better companions instead.

Narcissism is the egotistical admiration of oneself. Machiavellianism is a duplicitous interpersonal style and disregard for morality. These characteristics are bad enough, but the element of psychopathy adds in an absence of empathy and remorse to complete the Dark Triad: It’s all about me, I am willing to hurt you for my gain, and I don’t care how you feel.

Sometimes, a person like this will display a fourth trait to make a Dark Tetrad: sadism, or the enjoyment of others’ suffering. Some scholars have argued, in effect, that all triad types are really tetrads, because narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are all expressions of a governing tendency toward sadism. But whether such personalities enjoy their predation or not is beside the point; with three traits or four, they make life miserable for the rest of us.

Dark Triads involved in politics create a lot of damage, because narcissists are motivated by self-aggrandizement over public service, and psychopaths are drawn to extreme positions in a radicalized society. So watch out for Dark Triad personalities on the fringes of political and social causes (of either the right-wing or left-wing variety). 

Came to life around 1 p.m. when I awoke from a nap on the tvr .   Went to Senkik's for some bread, a russet potato for the next batch of Geri's vegetable beef soup, and some cantalope, an apple, and a largely tastefree beefsteak tomato.  Finally deposited Sarah's birthday gift in her Chase bank account.  Working up the gumption to mount the treadmill.

Treadmill.  Good news, I got on the treadmill.  Bad news, 10.27 & 0.25.  I had some pelvic pain but I'm not at all sure I didn't use that as an excuse to cut my walking time short.  One rarely knows.  I watched the first part of the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma.  Frightening, not so much for me but for my grandchildren and all grandchildren.

 

 

 

10/19/23

 Thursday, October 19, 2023

In bed at 10, awake at 4:35, up from lzb at 5, 52°, high of 60°, partly cloudy day with drizzle expected @ 5 pm.  AQI=33, wind SSW at 8, 6-13/22, 0.1" of rain in last 24 hours, 0.05 expected in next 24.  Sunrise at 7:10 at 103°, sunset at 6:02 at 257°, 10+52, solar noon altitude at 37°.  Venus is solely visible at @ 45° altitude and @ 100°ESE.  I let Lilly out at 5:20 onto wet ground but no rain.

Lyn's wake is this afternoon.  The plan is that I pick up Cam in Wauwatosa at noon and drive to Crestwood for the wake at 3, hoping to spend some time with Ed early and to leave by 4 to minimize night driving in the expected rain. I'm more than a little apprehensive about driving in rush hour and perhaps with rain.  I have fleeting thoughts of  The Straight Story movie about Alvin Straight driving 240 miles on a John Deere lawnmower from his home in Iowa to Mount Zion, WI in Crawford County to visit his estranged brother who had had a stroke.  There is no comparison of course but I am nonetheless concerned about how I will do today.

. . . . . .  

I had a hard time finding Cam's condo but eventually succeeded.  We arrived at the funeral home at 2:30 and immediately met with Ed.  We were there until 3:45 and spent a good deal of time with Ed and with 4 of his 5 daughters.  The wake was a very traditional Chicago Catholic one, with open casket, an amazing array of flowers, and an even more amazing display of photographs mounted on display boards.  Ed and his daughters were very gracious with Cam and me, especially Edie and Suzy.  The oldest, Mary Fran, took a photo of Ed and me and hopefully will text it to me.  I thought as I sat with Cam during a quiet moment how good and steady a friend Ed has been to us for almost 65 years, such a blessing.  I have so many memories of him at Mr. and Mrs. Cordes' Notch House on 16th Street, at the Queen Anne Apartments on 29th Street, and on Vine Street, in our night jobs stuffing Milwaukee Sentinel boxes at bus stops in the middle of those cold Milwaukee winter nights,  our driving to and from the Navy's amphibious base at Little Creek, Virginia, hitchhiking from Corpus Christi, Texas back to Little Creek, the moonshine donor, knockout drops for Tom, Hattiesburg, Mississippi (". . .'ceptin' n______"),  camping at Acadia National Forest in Maine, wondering if his old Ford with the hole in the floor covered by a pie tin would make it up some of the Adirondack mountains, the crazy trip to New Orleans in Ed Hanrahan's Oldsmobile, the Silver Dollar Hotel on Iberville Street, his fish tank on 16th Street, his bachelor party, my Buick LeSabre with the top half-open the next morning, Father John Holbrook threatening our graduation for refusing to make the annual retreat, . . .

The drive back to Milwaukee was difficult with quite a bit of rain, darkness, and almost invisible land markrs.  A semi-truck narrowly missed sideswiping my Volvo, changing lanes in front of us and misjudging distance.  I said to Cam that our guardian angels must be looking after us.  I got home at 6:40, 7 hours after leaving, wiped out.  My dear Geri was ready for me with a bowl of her homemade beef vegetable soup, some fresh peach slices, some quiche, and 2 freshly baked dinner rolls.  I am blessed.

  

10/18/23

 Wednesday, October 18, 2023

In bed at 10, fractured sleep, bed & lzb, up att 5:20.  47°, high of 61°, partly/mostly cloudy day, windy, AQI=42, wind SSW at 9 mph, 4-16/25, 60% chance of rain, 0.15" next 24 hours.  Sunrise at 7:08, sunset at 6:04, 10+55.

Slowed down by news of Lyn's death.  News of Lyn's death should not have come as a surprise for anyone familiar with her affliction with Alzheimer's and then a serious debilitating stroke, and I suppose it wasn't, but while it hasn't 'knocked me for a loop,' it sure has slowed me down.  I suppose it comes from talking with Cam, with Ed & Lyn's daughter Suzy, and mostly with Ed himself.  Suzy told me that Ed  remarked to his 5 daughter's that, at 82, he had never lived alone  and perhaps it was hearing that that affected me the most, the thought of Ed living alone and, as Geri remined me, Ed with no one to take care of, as he had taken care of Lyn for so many years,  taken care of his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren for so long, a true pater familias.  He took care of us at Notch House, taking charge of shopping and cooking.  He took care of me when the two of us lived at the Queen Anne Apartments on 29th Street, now an empty lot, when I was struggling with some serious depression and many dark thoughts, when the Navy sent me to see a shrink at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital to ensure I was fit to be commissioned.  Now he has joined my lengthening list of widowers, starting with my Dad, Grandpa Denny, Jimmy Cummings, Jimmy Aquavia, Jim Reck, Bob Boden, Frank DeGuire, Chuck Mentkowski, and triggering my dreaded 'Margaret, are you grieving' fear: It ís the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for. 

I am looking at a shoe now and remembering how, after my mother's shocking, early death, every piece of her closthing, her shoes, her work uniform, everything intimately connected to her, attained sacredness, relic status, able to induce tears of realization and remorse.  Things said or done or things not done or said and I'm reminded of Our Town:  "Emily: Does anyone ever realize life wile they live it . . . every minute, every minute?  Stage Manager: No, saints and poets, maybe . . . they do some."

I volunteered, not unwisely I hope, to drive the 120 miles to southwest Chicago with Cam for the wake tomorrow.  I haven't driven that far in years.  So today I'm hoping to get a decent night's sleep tonight, hoping that my back and bladder and bowels aren't problemmatic tomorrow, that the absence of napping won't affect my driving, especially on the long drive back to Milwaukee at rush hour.  Shudder.

How much is too much?  Most of the world was horrified by the news of Hamas' depradations, desacrations, and depravities in southern Israel on October 7th.  Throughout the world, but especially in the Western world, there were expressions of sympathy and support for Israelis and Israel and recognition of Israel's right to defend itself.  Knowing the history of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, I wonder whether the statements of American officials been so supportive as to give a green light, and more, to Netanyahu's government to engage in mass murders of civilians in Gaza?  Defense Secretary Austin has said that America's support of Israel is "ironclad"  and ""So, make no mistake: The United States will make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself," essentially making the U.S. the partner not only the Israeli people, but of Israel's government, i.e., Natanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, et al.   "In terms of conditions that we would place on the security assistance that we're providing to Israel, we have not placed any conditions on the provision of this equipment," Austin said at NATO headquarters in Brussels.  "This is a professional military, led by professional leadership, and we would hope and expect that they would do the right things in the prosecution of their campaign," he said.  As he traveled around the region over the past week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, making a point to Israelis and the world that he is a Jew, signaled that the Biden administration would have a high tolerance for whatever resulted from Israel’s military response to the Hamas attacks.  And now President Biden has flown into Tel Aviv to appear with Netanyahu and publicly side with Netanyahu's version of who attacked the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.  I'm wondering if this is an example of the idea that anything worth doing is worth overdoing.  I believe there is much mutual hatred on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian abyss, that much blood has been shed and lives ruined by hostility and violence.  We know there are radical elements in Netanyahu's government and perhaps (I don't know) in the IDF.   Am I just a faint-hearted friend of Israel and the Jewish people?   Can we be permitted to wonder about religious and nationalistic extremists in Israel as freely as we wonder about such people in the U.S.?

Then and Now

Paradise Drive, rustic road.  I drove the balance due on our gutter and downspout replacement to C&K Services in Newburgh this afternoon and drove down to Paradise Drive on my very roundabout way home.  It's still beautiful, as is so much of the land in northern Ozaukee and Washington counties.  There are hardly any unharvested corn fields left; all the remains is stubble.  Some alfalfa or other crop is still in some fields but mostly the fields are brown and the surrounding trees yellow, gold, cerise, deep red, and green.  I drove through the Sugar Bush at Riveredge and down County O past Deerfield Drive.  So many beautiful farms and beautiful homes, so close to Milwaukee and never seen by most city dwellers.

More sad news.  Bill H. responded to my email about Lyn and told me Paula just got a positive report on a lung biopsy.

Treadmill.   20:44; 0.50, a struggle

10/17/23

 Tuesday, October 17, 2023

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:41, fractured sleep night, bed/brr.  Let Lilly out, 40°, high of 58°. mostly cloudy day ahead, AQI=40, wind W at 6 mph, 3-8/12.  Sunrise at 7:07, sunset at 6:05, 10+58.

Gratefulness.    As I woke up this morning, I was aware of unwanted itchiness and slight pains and stiffness, but I had the realization, too seldom experienced, that I am - right now -  in Heaven, alive, able to walk and talk and think and read and write and hear and taste and see and living with Geri and Lilly in a magnificent home, so much more fortunate, more favored, more blessed than most of mankind that lives or has ever lived on this wondrous rock speeding through space. It doesn't last but it IS now.   I think of my mother and my father and my sister, of Uncle Jim and Aunt Monica, of Moses and Brother Coogan and Wally Halperin, and of Sarah and Andy, and I am reminded again of the 4th and 5th stanzas of Vacillation:

IV 

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

V

Although the summer Sunlight gild
Cloudy leafage of the sky,
Or wintry moonlight sink the field
In storm-scattered intricacy,
I cannot look thereon,
Responsibility so weighs me down.

Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.

I move between the two extremes, too often Mickey the Mope, like Ronny Cammareri needing Loretta Castorini to smack him and tell him to "Snap out of it!."  Or my dear sister.

A sunbeam in a darkening world.  Poland experienced a huge voter turnout in Sunday's election and defeated the new-fascist incumbent government in favor of a more liberal coalition.  How will the ousted react?  Like Trump?  Like Bolsonaro?

Heart of Darkness?  Will Republicans elect fascist Jim Jordan Speaker of the House this afternoon?  Facilis descensus Averno est . . . First vote: Jeffries, 212,; Jordan, 200; others, 20.  First bullet dodged.  More coming? Next vote tomorrow morning, after night of threats, promises.

Lilly and the White-tails.  I let Lilly out at daybreak and she promptly took note of 4 stately white-tail deer on the property line between our lot and the McGregors.  She snapped to attention, as the white-tails did, and they engaged in a staring contest with Lilly emitting an occasional "woof".  After a few minutes of this Mexican standoff, I opened the front door to let Lilly scoot inside away from the trespassing marauders who, in turn, elegantly proceeded across our lawn onto County Line Road whereupon I let Lilly outside again, unthreatened by the gentle big-eared neighbors.

The mezuzah on our doorpost; Howard Schoenfeld's FB post.  I subscribe to the Yiddish Word of the Day group on Facebook.  It reminds me of all the Yiddish I picked up from years of working with Bob Friebert and I enjoy the banter and sometimes bickering among the other subscribers.  Today, another subscriber posted: "Mezuzah. Can I have one on my door entrance if I'm not Jewish?"  As usual, there were many differing responses to the question, most responders saying 'yes,' but also some saying 'no.'  One response that really caught my eye said "I would say that, even if done with good intention, a non-Jew having a mezuzah on his door is a mockery and therefore should not be done.  No religion should be mocked."  We were given our own mezuzah years ago when we bought a new home and, after the massacre of the Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, we obtained and mounted a Tree of Life mezuzah on our front doorpost.  I made a point of learning the proper way to mount it, mounted it properly, and it's been there ever since.  We found it online, bought it, mounted it, and keep it to acknowledge to all who enter our home our brotherhood with Jews.  Most goyim don't notice it and wouldn't be familiar with its significance if they did notice it, but it is meaningful to Geri and me and to our Jewish friends.  So I was surprised that anyone would consider it "a mockery" of Judaism or of Jews.

    My friend and former next-door neighbor Howard Schoenfeld re-posted on FB a touching blog by another Jew, JoshGilman'sblog entitled "Why you might have lost all your Jewish friends this week and didn’t even know it."   Gilman wrote:

Over the past few years, as the world in general has just gotten crazier than ever, it has become popular to post things like “If you think you would have been one of the ones who hid Jews in WWII but are afraid of speaking up about _____, you wouldn’t have been.”

It’s honestly a generally fair assessment because if you aren’t the kind of person who can handle criticism for a non-conventional belief of any sort, you surely aren’t the kind of person who would risk the Gestapo knocking on your door for hiding people. I’ve seen so many posts like this over the past 2 years.

But… here is what your Jewish friends are wondering right now. So, why didn’t you post… this time?

And that’s not an accusatory, WHY DIDN’T YOU POST!? It’s a genuine question. Because they need to know the answer.

Maybe you are so horrified by it all that you truly don’t know what words to say.

Maybe you are still wondering what to say.

Well, it breaks my heart to tell you what your Jewish friends are wondering.

They are wondering if you are safe.

They are seeing many others cave to the propaganda, the vitriol from the Hamas apologists; they are seeing the pro-Hamas protests and the threats to the world, and they are wondering if you are too afraid to speak. 

And they know that if you are too afraid to speak, then you would be too afraid to hide them.

Did you know that that is a category of friend that every Jewish person has in their mind? Who would I run to? Who would hide me? 

. . .

Dear friends who may feel this blog is written to you. I am not saying I fear you or that I don’t love you. I’m just trying to let you know that unless you have proven that you will stand with me, I will not run to your home if they come for me and my family.

I am also not saying that silence is support. I do not believe that everyone who hasn’t posted support for the Jewish people and for Israel is complicit. But… I am not totally sure if you are safe. And none of your other Jewish friends are sure either. 

 I am wondering if this isn't a bit too much, the suggestion that if I haven't posted on Facebook or other social media, or informed all my Jewish friends of my opposition to Hamas' murder, mutilation, and desecration of Jewish men,  women, children, and elderly, my Jewish friends question my friendship, my courage.  Is the corollary true  - that if I do post my horror on FB or X and contact all my Jewish friends to affirm my horror, I would be among the Righteous Among the Nations who could be counted on to hide Jews from Nazis?

Lyn Felsenthal has died.  Cam Wakeman just called with the news after Ed called her.  She was in hospice care after a disabling stroke and she and Ed marked their 60th wedding anniversary on June 2nd of this year.   Cam and I will drive down together for the wake on Thursday afternoon.   Lyn is the first of the Notch House 5 + spouses to die.  Too many thoughts to speak.

Hundreds die in attack on Gaza hospital; who is responsible? An Anglican hospital in Gaza City has been hit by a high explosive weapon.  Palestinians say it was an air attack by the IDF.  Israel says it was a rocket fired by Islanic Jihad, probably a mistake.  Another possibility is an attack by a rogue IDF pilot or other agent.  The hospital was also sturck by reportedly an Israeli missile on Saturday with 4 persons injured.  False flag?  Rogue?  IDF?  How can we tell?  No party can be confidently believed.

Treadmill:  20:37; 0.50, a struggle to mount the treadmill tonight, and to stay on it for at least 20+0.50m. 

 

10/16/23

 Monday, October 16, 2023

In bed at 9 and awake at 5:45, up at 6:00.  46°, high of 54°, cloudy day ahead, AQI=21, wind NNW at 15 mph, 5-15/25.  Sunrise at 7:06, sunset at 6:07, 11+1.

Treadmill:  31:14 / 0.76

Israel in Gaza, Russia in Ukraine, U.S. in Vietnam.  One answer: Israel suffered a horrendous loss of life from Hamas which governs Gaza; their attacks on Gaza are retaliatory, very different from Russia's ruthless attacks on Ukrainian civilians and vital infrastructure and on America's invasion of Vietnam, which posed no threat to the U.S.  On the other hand, both Israel and Russia are engaging in war on civilian populations.  Almost half of the Gazan population is children; another sizable percentage are elderly, and many are women.  All are enduring Israel's siege cutoff of food, water, fuel, and electricity.  Israel refuses to allow a humanitarian corridor to and from Egypt or to guarantee that it won't attack trucks carrying relief supplies waiting to be delivered from Egypt.  Hospitals are attacked and affected by the lack of electricity and medical supplies.  Does what Hamas did on October 7th and thereafter justify what Israel has been doing in retaliation - legally or morally - or does it make the Israelis like the Russians?  Is Netanyahu merely another amoral sociopathic Trump, or more like Putin or Syria's Hafez Assad? "People live, people die."  Ben-Gvir?  Smotrich? the settlers?  Do they all simply honor Oriana Fallaci's maxim:  "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."  Sec'y. of State Tony Blinken has stated that the U.S. position is that the U.S. stands foursquare with Israel's right to defend itself and to take steps that ensure that Hamas can never repeat the acts of October 7th, but “[i]t needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”  Are those empty words?  The U.S. has put strong pressure on Israel to reopen the water supply to Gaza, especially in the southern region since the influx of refugees was already stressing supplies, and today Israel did so, but observers say that without electricity and fuel, the pumping stations and the plants that take salt out of the water don’t work. 

I am thinking of Israel's IDF forces dealing with the challenge of distinguishing Hamas people from innocent civilians and the situation facing American forces in Vietnam distinguishing VC people from innocent civilians.  Every Vietnamese was potentially VC.  I am remembering My Lai.  I am remembering Morley Safer's report showing Marines burning peasants' "hooches" outside of DaNang.  I remembering "free fire zones," and mass resettlements of peasants into "strategic hamlets," forced relocations that uprooted people from their homes - at gunpoint- to separate them from the VC and deprive the VC of any potential support from the people.  I remembering my first haircut on the Marine side of the DaNang airbase and wondering if the Vietnamese barber trimming around my ears with his straight-edge razor might be a secret VC or VC supporter.  What kinds of thoughts about 'the civilians'  are predictable, indeed inevitable, among the IDF soldiers once they are in Gaza?

From this morning's WaPo: “I think they’re going to go back in, heavy, and it’s going to be a bloodbath for everybody,” said Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie Jr., a retired Marine Corps general who served as the chief of U.S. Central Command until last year. He predicted that the violence will be “dragged out over a much longer period” than the Hamas attack, with the Israelis getting bogged down in the messy unpredictability of urban warfare."

On the other hand, here are Tom Friedman's thoughts from today's column in the NYT: 

My bottom line? Just ask this question: If Israel announced today that it was forgoing, for now, a full-blown invasion of Gaza, who would be happy, and who would be relieved, and who would be upset? Iran would be totally frustrated, Hezbollah would be disappointed, Hamas would feel devastated — its whole war plan came to naught — and Vladimir Putin would be crushed, because Israel would not be burning up ammunition and weapons the U.S. needs to be sending to Ukraine. The settlers in the West Bank would be enraged.

Meanwhile, the parents of every Israeli soldier and every Israeli held hostage would be relieved, every Palestinian in Gaza caught in the crossfire would be relieved, and every friend and ally Israel has in the world — starting with one Joseph R. Biden — would be relieved. I rest my case.