5/23/24

 Thursday, May 23, 2024

Prednisone, day 11.  I got up around 2 with some nagging, but not terrible, pains in both shoulders.  Both hands are also a bit stiff but not painful and I can make fists.  I checked myhealthevet.gov to see whether Dr. Ryzka's prescription for the 10 mg. prednisone had been mailed to me and saw that it had not, which surprised and disappointed me.  Having to go to the VA to pick up a prescription is a bit of an undertaking, 20 miles each way, coping with freeway traffic and construction, etc., but as it happens I'm going there today for a pedicure so I will happily pick up the 10 mg. prednisone.  Unless I receive a secure message from Dr. Ryzka today responding to my second message to him, I will take the additional prednisone without a lot of enthusiasm since it increases both my daily intake and cumulative intake of the corticosteroid, increasing to some degree the likelihood of unwanted side effects.  Plus, it will extend the weaning protocol. . .  I picked up the 10 mg. dosage this afternoon.

My overnight oatmeal this morning was particularly tasty with fresh raspberries and blueberries and Activia vanilla yogurt.  I also put more brown sugar in it last night though I know that is problematic with prednisone's effect on blood glucose.

Another younger classmate has died, Pete Ottmer, 4 years younger than me, a career Army lawyer after graduating in our MULS Class of 1970.  With my indolent, sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle, how have I lived so long?

Sarah's coming to town next month.  She'll be in the States during Peter's sojourn in Germany.  Small world.

Facebook posting.  I posted my memoir account of my time in Philadelphia serving as CACA.  I added the following at the beginning and at the end:

When I retired many year ago, I wrote a memoir of my earlier years, including my time in the Marine Corps, service in Vietnam, and in the year following my Vietnam service.  Each year, as Memorial Day approaches, my thoughts focus not on my time "in country," but on the year I returned to the States.  Here's why:

. . . 

(end) This weekend I will visit Wood National Cemetery as I do now on  Memorial Day weekends.  I will think of the thousands of veterans buried there, each under a common military headstone.  But mostly, for the many who were KIAs, WIAs, and MIAs, I will think of their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers, their wives and children and other family members who opened their doors to see someone like me, bearing terrible news.

and my own comment:

I made those CACO calls in 1966 and 1967, early on during the Vietnam War or, as I now think of it, our war on Vietnam. How many time over the last 57 years have I recalled, almost relived those experiences. They have colored my judgments on all wars and military adventures since. On my now many visits to the VA Medical Center on National Avenue, I usually approach through 'the back door,' i.e., through the National Cemetery and the Old Soldiers Home. These locations have come to take on something like a reverence for me, not because of my years of experiences in the Marines or in Vietnam, but because of my few experiences with those mothers and wives in their doorways. They made me ever conscious that the most innocent victims and the most-suffering heroes of our endless wars are those mothers, fathers, wives, children, friends and lovers of those our government sends off to kill and be killed. My sister told me that in 1965 when my mother oened and read my letter from Japan telling the family that I was on my way to Vietnam, she cried. She wept, as she must have wept when she learned my father was on Iwo Jima 20 years before that. To me, Mother's Day is a Hallmark holiday; Memorial Day is the real deal.

How well I remember, almost viscerally, the dread I felt each day as my CACO duty day approached and the relief I felt when I made it through the duty day without Pete Powell telling me "We've got another one."  We weren't called upon to make casualty calls late at night and I can't recall at what hour of the evening I was 'off the hook,' 8 o'clock?  9 o'clock?  But I do recall sitting in our living room in my full uniform after work, after dinner, keeping my eye on the clock and praying the telephone would not ring.  I was 25, 26 years old, feeling half-dead, preferring to be back in Vietnam to having CACO duty.

More Yeshayahu Leibowitz: from his essay,  Religious Praxis:

Only by virtue of the Halakah was Judaism delimited as a single independent and autonomous unit distinquishable from others . . .  The upshot was that Judaism as a historic entity was not constituted by its set of beliefs.  It was not embodied in any specific political or social order.  [It] did not consist of a specific ethic . . . Judaism as a specifically defined entity existing continuously over a period of three thousand years was not realized in philosophy, literature, art, or anything other than halakhic living.

. . .

 Current attempts to identify Judaism with the Hebrew Bible, which is presented as procliming values ideals, and a vision that "sshine with their own light," are unrelated to the Halakhah and are independent of it.   This kind of bibliolatry is Lutheran, not Jewish.

 Major accomplishment:  (1) I got my first haircut and beard trim since March 4th. (2) Got a pedicure at the VA.  (3) Changed my email address at the VA.  (4) Picked up my 10 mg. prednisone at the VA.

Pleasant sight:  A song sparrow or a pine siskin nabbing a big hunk of nesting material for our cotton ball.

Disappoimntment: No wallk with Judy or Rachel today.

5/22/24

 Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Dodged the bullet last night with the long, powerful squall line.

Prednisone, day 10.  I had my oatmeal and prednisone at about 5 a.m., with some discomfort in my shoulders but feeling pretty good, as on the last two days.

Major accomplishment:  I took a walk outside this afternoon with "Judy," my first rollator, walking from our garage east and north to the first turn on Wakefield, 9545 N., then reversed to County Line Road down to the creek and back up to the garage.  My first outdoor walk in many months, the first in a couple of years using the rollator.  I've been hampered both by my laziness and by some foolish embarrassment at being reliant on the rollator while other folks walk unaided by themselves or with a companion or with their dog or child. My major concern was not my leg strength or balance, but rather whether my lower back would tighten up on me, making walking upright difficult.   The photo is of "Rachel," my tall rollator which I got because of my tendency to lean down unnecessarily and painfully onto "Judy" when I walk with her.

More on Zionism in this morning's NYTimes.  Bret Stephens has an op-ed on "Who's More Likely to Fail, Israel or Iran?"  He wrote: 

Like Iran, Israel still has profound domestic vulnerabilities, only some of which came to the fore in the months of protest over judicial reform that preceded Oct. 7. That’s to say nothing about right-wing extremism, the resistance of the ultra-Orthodox to fulfill their civic obligations or the ultimate question of an eventual Palestinian state. But none of those need put the deepest convictions of Zionism at stake: that Jews have the right to rule themselves as a sovereign state in their original homeland.

There is that claim again that Jews, as such, individually and/or collectively (?), have the right to rule themselves as a sovereign state in their original homeland.   This raises again the questions (1) why the Jews and not other groupings of people with more characteristics in common that Jews share, and (2) what is the source of this claimed right that makes it binding on all others, including those who have lived for centuries in the claimed homeland, and (3) how is it that the claimed sovereign state is to be established in land occupied by non-Jews and not dominated by Jews for nearly two millennia?

Why don't the Kurds, the Yazidis, the Samaritans, the Ulster Catholics, the Scots, the Welsh,, any of the American aboriginal tribes, the Basques, the Catalonians, the Moravians and Silesians, and the Kashmiris have the same right to rule themselves in their original homelands?  If the Canaanites were still around as a recognizable ethnic group, would they have a superior claim than the Jews to what is now Israel, as prior possessors for centuries?  What is it about the Jews in the late 19th century that gave them this claimed right?  By what legal and political authority were the Palestinian Arabs who had lived in what is now Israel for centuries required to submit to Jewish hegemony?  Zionism, the colonial settlement of Israel, and the establishment of the state of Israel are the results not of a legal or natural right but rather of the enabling wealth of the Rothschilds, the duplicitous maneuverings of the British government during WWI, European and other persecution of Jews for centuries but especially during the Holocaust, and shame-guilt-and self-interest based maneuvering in the UN after the Holocaust.  The Europeans committed mortal sins and the Palestinian Arabs were burdened with the penance.

The Holdoveers trigger memories of Vietnam and Willow Grove.  We watched The Holdovers with one of our favorite actors,, Paul Giammati, last night.  It is set in 1970 during the Vietnam War, and featured a mother of a young Black man killed in Vietnam.  It triggered memories I put in my memoir.

As the PIO and the only officer with Vietnam experience, I was required to give speeches to local civic and fraternal groups from north Philadelphia up through Montgomery and Bucks counties.  I spoke to Rotarians, Kiwanians, and others.  I spoke about Vietnam, the war, and the Marines.  I lied.  I painted rosier pictures than any respect for truth would have permitted.  Anyone listening to Captain Clausen would have thought that morale in Vietnam was good, that progress was being made in ‘winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people,’ that the racial tensions that were racking the United States, the peace movement and the drug culture had no repercussions within the Marine Corps.  I was playing my role just as Lyndon Johnson was playing his role and Robert McNamara and William Westmoreland were playing theirs and none of us spoke with candor.   Had I told the truth about how I felt in those luncheon addresses, I would have made the local evening news and probably been court-martialed or at least cashiered from the Marines.  Marine captains are not to call the Commander-in-Chief, or the Secretary of Defense, or a combat theater commander liars or fools, although the Pentagon Papers made it abundantly clear that Americans were never told the truth about Vietnam by government officials.  I played my little part and disliked myself for doing it.

My worst job, however, – the worst job I have ever had – came every 6 days when I was the Marine Corps’ Casualty Assistance Call Officer for the north side of Philadelphia and the northern suburbs.  When a Marine was killed or seriously injured while on active duty, whether combat-related or not, an officer and a senior staff NCO delivered the news personally to the next-of-kin, almost always the wife or the parents.  The information about the death or injury came into the Marine detachment at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.  If the family member to be notified lived north of Market Street, one of the teams in my rotation got the call to tell the family.  My team was myself and a staff sergeant who worked for me, a fellow named Schmidt from Antigo, Wisconsin.  The call would first go to Pete Powell, our admin officer, who would call me or the other officer on CACO duty.  I would call SSgt. Schmidt and pick him up at his home.  I would stop at the hangar to pick up the paperwork and Schmidt and I would drive, usually silently, to the home.  Each of us knew that if the circumstances were different, it could be his wife or parents receiving the Marine at the door.  As soon as the person visited opened the door, or saw us approach, he, or usually she, knew why we were there.  If the Marine was not dead, I would have to get that information out immediately.  If I wasn’t yelling “he’s all right” or “he’s alive and being cared for” or some such statement, I didn’t have to tell the wife or mom that the Marine was dead.  She knew it from my uninvited and dreaded presence in her doorway.  If we didn’t have information already about church membership, I would stay with the family while SSgt. Schmidt went to get a priest or minister or at least a friend or neighbor who could stay with the bereaved after we had left. Such misery! Such suffering!  How awful those encounters, how awful still the memories of them.

It was the memories of the mothers and wives that were with me as I watched George H. W. Bush gushing over the Gulf War in 1991.  “The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian peninsula. . . It’s a proud day for America – and, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”  I couldn’t help thinking: “What an asshole.”  Those memories remained with me as I watched “H. W.’s” idiot son “W” and his band of neocon chickenhawks prove Daddy wrong in the desert sands of Mesopotamia.  Bush and Cheney and Paul Wolfewitz and Richard Perle and almost all of their legion of neocon supporters never stood in a doorway in front of a shrieking, terror-stricken mother learning that her son is dead, never spoke with a young wife about the logistics of returning her husband’s body through the Philadelphia Navy Yard and of the need for funeral arrangements.  While others were making these casualty calls in north Philadelphia and all across America, George W. Bush was getting inducted into Skull and Bones and enjoying his last year at Yale under his student deferment while Richard Bruce Cheney was on his fourth or fifth deferment, working in Madison for Governor Warren Knowles while working on a Ph.D. at the UW.  Richard Perle was working on his master’s degree at Princeton afterwards attending the London School of Economics while Paul Wolfowitz was doing graduate work at the University of Chicago after graduating from Cornell.  These men were all privileged.  They were not the type to get their asses shot off in a messy war in Asia.  They were not the type to let military service alter the trajectory of their privileged lives.  Like the vice-chickenhawk-in-chief Cheney, they “had other priorities in the 60s than military service.”  Very few of the Marines and soldiers and airmen and sailors who did serve came from such backgrounds.  John Kerry was a notable exception.  They came from backgrounds much like mine: blue collar, the so-called ‘working class.’  They did not have estates in Kennebunkport.  Their homes were apartments and modest frame houses on small lots.  Their list of educational attainments usually stopped at high school, boot camp and infantry training.  These were the men the United States sent to kill and be killed, not the likes of Bush and Cheney, Wolfewitz and Perle.  And it was the wives and children, the parents and siblings of such men who would live with the consequences of their service.  For them, it wasn’t “the specter of Vietnam” that was “buried forever,” it was their son, their husband, their father, their brother.  For them, the “Vietnam syndrome” has never ended, any more than World War II “syndrome” or the Korea “syndrome“ has ended for those who suffered the deepest losses.  Below is a poem that the Bloody Bushes would have perhaps entitled “The Civil War Syndrome.”  It is, to me, the saddest poem ever written. 

Come Up From the Fields Father

Walt Whitman

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

 

Lo, ‘tis autumn,

Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,

Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,

Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines,

(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?

Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)

 

Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,

Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.

 

Down in the field all prospers well,

But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call.

And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.

 

Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,

She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.

 

Open the envelope quickly,

O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,

O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!

All swims before her eyes, flashed with black, she catches the main words only,

Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,

At present low, but will soon be better.

 

Ah now the single figure to me,

Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,

Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,

By the jamb of a door leans.

 

Grieve not, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs,

The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay’d,)

See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.

 

Alas, poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be

better, that brave and simple soul,)

While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,

The only son is dead.

 

But the mother needs to be better,

She with thin form presently drest in black,

By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,

In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,

O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,

To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.

5/21/24

 Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Lights out around 11, up to let Lilly out at midnight, up again, and lights on at 3, when I let Lilly out again.  Ate my overnight oatmeal at 4ish, with a prednisone pill, as I read the  Report of the Panel of Experts in International Law regarding the request of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for Arrest Warrants for Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant and for 3 leaders of Hamas. . . .  By 6:30, there is a lovely fog creeping in from the lake, enshrouding our neighbors' gray house.

Prednisone, day 9.A major improvement over the last 2 days in the bilateral shoulder pain and good improvement in both hands.  I sent a follow-up Secure Message to Dr. Ryzka reporting this.  Dr. Ryxka replied to my first message before reading my second: "Dr. Ryzka replied to your original secure message late yesterday by mentioning that he has sent an additional prescription for 10 mg pills of prednisone and he would like for you to take while continuing prednisone 20 mg AM. Take the additional 10mg in late afternoons or early evenings daily (for a total 30 mg daily) and he will see during your next appt if this dose makes a meaningful change."  Quid nunc?  I will wait for his response to my second secure message.

I put on my compression socks again this morning, hoping for some reduction in the lymphedema, which didn't occur yesterday.

I spoke with pharmacist Jill Hansen at 11:30 this morning.  She alerted me to the fact that I may end up on insulin and a continuous glucose monitoring device if my glucose count goes up too high, not forever, but until my glucose gets to an acceptable area.

More thoughts on Jews as a "nation" with a "national right of self-determination."  After writing about Zionism yesterday, I took off the shelf a book containing a collection of essays by the Jewish and Zionist philosopher and polymath Yeshayahu Leibowitz.  I purchased it from Ebay a couple months ago for a price I wouldn't ordinarily have been willing to pay because I knew of his then-contemporary opposition to the occupation of Palestinian lands after the 1967 war and his prediction on the effect occupation would have on the Israelis, their government, and their occupying military.  He is not an easy read but it is a worthwhile one. One of his essays titled "The Uniqueness of the Jewish People" including the following:

The belief that the history of the Jewish people differs from that of all other people hinges on the use of the term "people."   The existence of different peoples is a fct we take for granted without giving it much thought.  Only rarely does it occur to us to ask ourselves what indeed is "a people."  Why does a conglomerate of human beings, each of whom differs from the others, constitute a particular nation, while others, who do not differ from these individuals more than they differ from one another, do not belong to this people?  A "people" is not a natural entity.  It is a being of the mind.  A nation exists insofar as there is a consciouness of its existence - the awareness of particular human beings that their communal existence has a framework which is "the nation," their nation.

. . .  no historian or sociologist has succeeded in proposing  a criterion that would determne whether a  certain human group was or was not a nation.  Several defining characteristics have, indeed, been listed: racial origen, language, territory, state, ,and so forth.  But many and diverse groups are considered "nations" and, although they lack one or even several of these characteristics, no one doubts their status as "nations."  It is instructive to compare the Swedish people and the German people (the Austrians? the Swiss?), the Indian people (who lack a "national language"), the Arab people, the Palestinian people, and so on.  Can an objective acount be given of the peoplehood of all of these national groups?

Where does the Jewish people stand in view of these considerations?  Its existence has been an  empirical fact for the last 3,000 years.  Despire variations, changes, and structural metamorphoses, it has presereved in self-identity and continuity for approximately a hundred generations.  It retained them not only in the self-awareness of the Jews but also in the consciousness of non-Jews. . .  What were the defining characteristicss of the historical Jewish people during these hundred generations?

The biological criterion does not apply. The Jewish people is a multiracial melange.  Today we can clearly discern typical facial features of all races among people who are Jews in every sense of the word "Jew."  Even from the standpoint of the traditional perception, the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have no racial or even familial peculiarity which would distinquish them from the Ismaelites, the Edomites, the Arameans, and the Moabites.

As for language, the significance of Hebrew for the Jewish people is unlike the significance of the national tongue for other peoples.  During most of their history the Jews did not speak Hebrew.  [Even the Talmud] is written mostly in Aramaic.  In the contemporary world, most of the 13-14 million people who are considered Jews do not know or speak Hebrew.  Yet Hebrew was and is even today the national language of the entire Jewish people because every Jew knows that the Torah was given in Hebrew, even if he reads it in translation, and the Shma and the daily prayer are in Hebrew. 

The historic Jewish nation is not defined by territory either.  Most of its history is not specifically related to the land of Israel . . .  Needless to say, the historical Jewish people is not definable in terms of statehood.  During the greater part of its history it had no state of its own.  Even today only a minority of Jews are citizens of the Jewish state.

The Jewish people, as it existed in history, is definable only by reference to its Judaism -- a Judaism that was not a mere idea in the mind but the realization of a program of living set forth in the Torah and delineated by its Mitzvoth.  This way of life constituted the specific national content of Jewishness or, in other words, the uniqueness of the Jewish people.  The Jew practiced a way of living that was exclusively his. [Style of eating, sexual practices, work/Sabbath.]  Unlike the identies of of the peoples that are characterized by race, language, territory, or state, the national identity of the historic Jewish people is Judaism . . .  It is not surprising that a people distinquished by a criterion absent from the defining characteristics of all other peoples should also have a history which was different from that of other nations.

The distinctiveness of the Jewish people as a historic national entity began to be blurred some two hundred years ago.  Until then a Jew who cst off the yoke of Torah and Mitzvoth usually recognized that he thereby loosened his ties with the Jewish people.  The innovation of recent generations is that phenomonon of Jews - a great number of them, and today the vast majoirty of those considered Jews - who have abandoned the Jewish way of life without severing themselves from their people.  There is no authentic "Jewish" content to their lives that might distinquish them from that of Gentiles.  Nevertheless, they continue to regard themselves as Jews, to present themselves as Jews and to by regarded as such by others.  Consequently, a question that was hitherto meaningless arises: who is a Jew?  Who and what is "the Jewish people" with which they are affiliated?  Not only is there today no Jewish national identity that actually distinquishes a Jew from a Gentile, but even among those held to be Jews, the common the common constitutive element that would render them one people is lacking.  Jews who abide by Torah and Mitzvoth and Jews who have cast off their yoke cannot dine at the same table, have difficulty working together (Sabbath), and even marriage between them is problematic when both parties do not agree to observance of the laws relating to "purity of the family."  Thus the appeal to national solidarity of all Jews is nowadays merely verbal and declaratory.  It reflects no living reality. . . 

In our times we lack an objective criterion, independent of the subjective beliefs, views, and opinions of those who apply it, to determine whether someone is a Jew.  In other words, we have no mark by which to define Jewish identity today. . .

Am I overreaching in thinking this is Professor Leibowitz's scholarly way of saying that "the Jewish nation" and its "national right to self-determination" is a self-licking ice cream cone?   I must be too simplistic in this thought.  I need to read more and think more, though I notice that Leibowitz went on to write:

There is no greater opposition than that between the conception of Am Segulah (a chosen people) as implying subjection to an obligation and Am Segulah as purely a privilege.  He who empties the concept of the Jewish people of its religious content (like David Ben Gurion) and still describes it as  Am Segulah turns this concept into an expression of racisst chauvinism.

Is that what Zionism has turned into - racist chauvinism? 

Major storm heading our way at 10 p.m. as I stop typing these notes.  I have my old boom box which receives AM as well as FM radio stations on the kitchen counter along with a hurricane lamp.  On the end table next to the recliner I have a flashlight and a battery-powered lantern.  iPhone, laptop, and Apple Watch all maximally charged.  Keeping my fingers crossed that we won't have a power outage, but I'm nervous about it, remembering the 27-hour power loss we had a couple of years ago.  Lilly has been very nervous, seeking reassurance and wanting to go outside for no reason.  Does she sense the atmospheric pressure dropping?  Also, it's 83℉ outside at 10:30!  I'll turn the lights out but I suspect I won't get much sleep until this monster blows past us.  Keeping my fingers crossed for minimal tree damage.

Tornado warning/sighting at Aztalan State Park in Jefferson County with its fascinating Indian mounds.  Residents of Lake Mills and Johnson Creek are being warned to head for their basements now.  60 mph wind gusts.

 

 

5/20/24

 Monday, May 20, 2024

Lights out around 9 p.m., up to let Lilly out at 2:45, turn slow cooked down to 'warm,' and lights back on to read the NYRB article "Big Germany, What Now" by Timothy Garton Ash, a copy of which I emailed to Sarah.  I did the NYT mini-crossword at 4:45 and opened the "Connections" puzzle which, coupled with the bowl of warm oatmeal I had just consumed, persuaded me to turn off the lights and get some more sleep, and woke up at 6:15 to let Lilly out again.  At 6:30, I managed to solve today's "Connections," i.e., 3 out of 4.

Prednisone, day 8.  At 6:15, I still have some pain in my shoulders and stiffness in both hands, but all seems better than yesterday.  Last night, my shoulders and hands seemed almost normal.  Is this because I sent the Secure Message to Dr. Ryzka?

    Why have I been so enormously hungry since taking the prednisone?  YES!

O frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!  A gorgeous Baltimore Oriole has flown onto my shepherd's crook and jumped, not onto the feeder tube, but onto the big ball of nesting cotton to load up.  It's time to put out some orange halves.

Major accomplishment:  (1) I mounted a pair of compression socks on my badly swollen feet and lower legs for the first time in weeks.  (2) I was mirabile dictu able to get my feet and socks into my old Brooks athletic shoes. (3) I drove to Sendik's to pick up fresh fruit, yogurt, and bread.  (4) I went to the ATM at BMO Harris for some cash and to McDonald's for 2 cheeseburgers, each requiring me successfully to extend my left arm out of the car to do my business.

Griffy the Cooper

The cooper should know about tubs.

But I learned about life as well,

And you who loiter around these graves

Think you know life.

You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps,

In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub.

You cannot lift yourself to its rim

And see the outer world of things,

And at the same time see yourself.

You are submerged in the tub of yourself —

Taboos and rules and appearances,

Are the staves of your tub.

Break them and dispel the witchcraft

Of thinking your tub is life!

And that you know life!

Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology (1914)

How modern this old poem seems in this age of people living in silos!

5/19/24

 Sunday, May 20, 2024

I stopped journalling for three weeks before Dr. Ryzka put me on prednisone.  I wondered during that period whether I would ever start again.  I was a little surprised at how quickly I picked it up again when once I started the prednisone.

I let Lilly out (again) at 5 a.m. when I woke.  It's a very beautiful predawn with a steady breeze NNW breeze moving the newly-leafed branches of birch trees and the magnificent deep red maple tree across the street.  Even with the storm door closed as I wait for Lilly's return, I hear the cardinals calling.  I'm too lazy to get up and give Merlin a listen to hear who else is up and sounding.

Prednisone, day 7.  Last night was a disappointment.  I worked up the courage to try sleeping in my bed, retiring at about 9:15.  By 10, it was clear that I'm not ready, too much shoulder pain and discomfort - left, right, right, left.  I was able to disentangle myself from the top sheet and quilt and to get out of the bed with some P&D, to get my heavy cotton robe on by myself, and moved back to the TV room and the recliner, where G was still awake, watching a streaming soap and then SNL.  Lights out at midnight, pss at 2ish, 3:30, and lights back on at 5 for Lilly'as outing among the swaying tree limbs.  I need to count my blessings.  My blessed mother used to tell me that when we lived in considerable misery in the roachy basement apartment at 7303 S. Emerald.  I sit here now 75, almost 80 years later, thinking of how much she endured in those years after WWII.  Just thinking of it knocks me for a loop.

At 5:15, I turned off the slow cooker, planning to eat the overnight oatmeal around 6 when I take my 7th 20 mg. prednisone, hoping for more pain relief and lubricity this morning.  I take the prednisone as planned but still have the shoulder/hands pain which causes me to send a Secure Message to Dr. Ryzka later in the morning.  I do wonder whether I am misdiagnosed.

Zionism.  There is a guest op-ed in this morning's NYTimes titled "Will Zionism Survive the War?" by Professor Yuval Noah Harari of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.   The professor defends various understandings of Zionism and argues that the version of it represented by Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition's hard right-wing government in Israel is the worst.

In recent years, however, Israel has been ruled by governments that turned their back on the moderate forms of Zionism. . . In its own words, the founding principle of the Netanyahu coalition is that “the Jewish people has an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of Eretz Yisrael” — Eretz Yisrael is a Hebrew term referring to the entire territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The Netanyahu coalition envisions a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, which would grant full rights only to Jewish citizens, partial rights to a limited number of Palestinian citizens and neither citizenship nor any rights to millions of oppressed Palestinian subjects. This is not just a vision. To a large extent, this is already the reality on the ground.

 I have been wondering for months whether Zionism is Israel's Original Sin, that is to say, whether the whole idea of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine (or elsewhere for that matter) is intrinsically racist, or tribal, colonial, and exclusionary.  Professor Harari writes:

Born in the late 19th century, modern Zionism is a national movement similar to the ones that arose during the same period among Greeks, Poles and many other peoples. The key idea of Zionism is that Jews constitute a nation, and as such they have not just individual human rights but also a national right to self-determination. (My emphasis added.)

Is it accurate that Jews constitute a nation with a national right to self-determination?  I note first that the idea of a right implies its corollary, a duty, which is to say that since Jews have a national right to self-determination, others, i.e., non-Jews have a duty to respect that right.  If I have a right to life, all others have a duty not to kill me.  Questions that come to mind include: (1) In what sense were and are the Jews of the world a "nation" and in what sense are they not?, and (2) when, where, and how did this supposed right arise?

A nation is generally considered a group of people sharing many common characteristics like language, history, customs, values,  religion, and usually geographical territory.  Thus, it seems natural enough to speak of the Sioux people of America's Great Plains as the Sioux Nation and of the Kurdish people occupying contiguous land in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey as the Kurdish Nation.  Can we reasonably say the same thing of the Jewish people spread across the world in Theodore Herzl's day when Zionism was developed?  Some Jews lived in Palestine as a distinct minority among majority Muslim Arabs, but many more lived in Russia, in Eastern, Central, and Western Europe, throughout the Americas, in North Africa, in the Far East, seemingly everywhere, as a diaspora.  They spoke many different languages and had many different customs.  If they had anything holding them together it was their ethnic ancient history and their religion, but even in their religion(s), they were pluralistic, as they are today, witness the many atheistic or agnostic secular Jews in Israel itself vs. the ultra-orthodox and everybody in between  How could it reasonably be said that a Jew with deep roots in Morocco, a Jew in Brooklyn, New York, and a Jew in Bialystok, Poland, were members of the same nation, each with a common right of national self-determination?

If there is or was such a right, in what is it based?  Where does it spring from?  Israel's settler class, her gush emunim, believe it comes from the Almighty, as in the lyrics to the theme from Exodus, sung by Pat Boone:  "This land is mine.  God gave this land to me. . . If I must fight, I'll fight to make this land our own, until I die, this land is mine."  For those of us who don't accept the notion that God is the source of Israel's right of self-determination, where else shall we look?    Perhaps the UN Partition Plan for the British Mandate of Palestine in 1947, but that plan was never put into effect.  It prompted the Israel-Arab War of 1947-48 which established boundaries for the State of Israel very different from those specified in the Partition Plan.  Did the right originate in Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948 or Israel's recognition and acceptance into the United Nations in 1949?  But the former is, as they say, a self-licking ice cream cone, and the latter is simply the recognition of a de facto state, a sovereign entity with monopoly control over the use of power within its own territory and by and on its own people, another self-licking ice cream cone.

It seems inescapable to me that the Jews of the world have not comprised a nation since the first century C.E. and that they had in Herzl's time and now no national right of self-determination.  Zionism was made up out of whole cloth by Herzl in 1896, an invention, a pipedream brought on by the pernicious, ubiquitous, anti-semitism of European Christians.  It also seems to me that an inherent characteristic of a Jewish state is a privileged status for Jews and, at best, a tolerated but less privileged status for non-Jews or, at worst, expulsion of non-Jews, which is what we have had throughout Israel's history.  It has culminated, after the 1967 war and especially since the ascendency of Likud and related political parties, in a racist, indeed apartheid state.

5/18/24

 Saturday, May 18, 2024

Prednisone, day 6, and I still have bilateral shoulder pain and hand pain in the morning.  I overcame the temptation to sleep on my bed last night and spent the night on the recliner again.  I was awake in the middle of the night and listened to the first part of the NYTimes Magazine long feature "The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel," the balance of which I listened to when I awoke at 5 a.m.

Major accomplishment: (1) I lay down and napped, under the covers, on my bed and got up on my own.  Getting up from a left-side laydown was not bad, but doing the same from the right side was a problem.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this persistent shoulder (and hand/wrist/fingers) pain will disappear very soon due to the prednisone.  I wish I had paid more attention to Dr. Ryzka when he mentioned something about when I would feel better.  I hope to sleep in bed tonight for the first time in two months.

Two telling tales about Israelis, Israel's government, and the Palestinians.  One is a guest opinion in this morning's NYTimes by Megan K. Stack entitled "The View Within Israel Turns Bleak."  She describes the hard, bitter, venomous attitude of the Israeli public toward Palestinian Arabs, not just in the Occupied Territories, or "districts" as the Israeli government calls them, but in Israel itself, where about 20% of the population is Arab.  She describes the widespread distribution of military rifles and ammunition by the government among Israeli Jews, but not among Israeli Arabs and the widespread fear among Israeli Arabs.  She reminds me of a term I heard for the first time yesterday or the day before watching the Isaiah Berlin Lecture at Oxford University by Professor Margaret MacMillan of the University of Toronto: "Kabinettskriege" or "cabinet wars."  Cabinet wars, unlike "total wars," were limited in scope, goals, and outcomes, and limited to fewer and more professional fighters.  Total wars engage total populations, involve more of the total population through conscription and otherwise, and have massively different impacts on people's thinking.  Total wars lead to widespread hatred and demonization of the enemy, meaning not just the combatants but the peoples from which they come.  "We're gonna have to zap, the dirty little Jap," and all that.  The Tokyo firebombings, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki become acceptable in total war, not in cabinet wars.  From the beginning, the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts have been total war, existential war, giving rise to near-ubiquitous fear and hatred.  I say "near" ubiquitous because there was a "Left" in Israel ab initio, and at least until October 7, 2023, there were many Israeli Jews who worked for and yearned for peace with the Palestinians.  Not so many anymore.

     The other piece is the very long historical article I listened to during the night and early morning from the current NYTimes magazine "The Unpunished: How the Extremists Took Over Israel" by  Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti.  It's the history of the Settler Movement in Israel, of "From the River to the Sea," of Gush Emunim and Greater Israel, of Exodus and "This land is mine, God gave this land to me."  It's the story of racism and apartheid and so much of what is wrong with Israel, has been wrong from the beginning and became worse after the 1967 war.  It's the story of Israel's right-wing terrorist movements, of Rabbi Meir Kahane, of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, of Yigal Amir and Yitzhak Rabin, of Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich.  It's the story of how Israel became like America's Jim Crow South, and has become or is becoming a pariah state.

LTMW I see our good neighbor John MacGregor out for a walk in the 70℉ sunny weather.  He wears a short-sleeved, lilac-colored shirt and coral-colored Bermuda shorts, with his arms crossed behind his hunched back resulting from childhood polio.  He stops to study something on the street or in the grass on our lawn before deciding to proceed up into Mequon rather than down County Line Road.  I wonder whether his choice is affected by the gentle hill on County Line vs. the level road in Mequon.  I doubt it since he appears to be in very good condition from his multiple walks day in and day out.  I almost always feel some shame at my own non-existent exercise habits when I see John out and about.  We're the same age and he has had some daunting health scares since we have been next-door neighbors, but I daresay he will long outlive me, and live better, despite the history of polio, because of his exercise discipline.

    I also see a female goldfinch plucking a big beak full of nesting material from the $8 cotton ball I have hanging on one of our shepherd's crooks.  Her male partner is perched on the tube feeder with several strands of cotton stuck on his beak but blowing horizontally in the steady breeze.  I need to supplement the sunflower and safflower seeds in the feeder this afternoon.

Schroeder the Fisherman

I sat on the bank above Bernadotte/ And dropped crumbs in the water,

Just to see the minnows bump each other, until the strongest got the prize.

Or I went to my little pasture /  Where the peaceful swine were asleep in the wallow,

Or nosing each other lovingly, / And emptied a basket of yellow corn,

And watched them push and squeal and bite, / And trample each other to get the corn.

And I saw how Christian Dalllman's farm, / Of more than three thousand acres,

Swallowed the patch of Felix Schmidt,  / As a bass will swallow a minnow.

And I say if there anything in man - / Spirit, or conscience, or breath of God

That makes him different from fishes or hogs,  /  I'd like to see it work!

Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology (1914)

5/17/24

 Friday, May 17, 2024

MaryBeth was in the hospital last night, Geri minding E while Sharon tended to her mother.  Geri got home at 10 p.m. and unwound for 2 hours watching Lawrence and Alex.  I couldn't sleep and was up till 1 a.m., then up again at 4:30 to enjoy my overnight oatmeal and prednisone pill around 5.  Then, resolved not to start my day with blustering, rude Joe and strange Mika, I watched several YouTube pieces on William Blake, an almost lifelong favorite of mine, perhaps mostly for the few lines I so frequently turn to

Every Night & every Morn

Some to Misery are Born 

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to Endless Night 

It's hard to believe that William Blake truly existed, that he walked this Earth, wrote his lines, drew and painted and engraved his images, and saw his visions.  Has there been anyone like him other than Shakespeare perhaps?  I suppose I, like everyone else, was introduced to him in high school, perhaps by Brother Coogan, and again in college, by John Pick, but I recall being most "into him" during my first year in the Marine Corps, more than 60 years ago, when I enjoyed his lyrical poems so much and tried to understand his prophetic poems while stationed temporarily at Naval Air Station Glynco outside of Brunswick, Georgia, where I became a fan of Sydney Lanier and The Marshes of Glynn.  (How's that for a run-on sentence?_

Blake lived during the reigns of George III and George IV, during the revolutionary eras in America and France.  He died almost 200 years ago yet he seems so incredibly modern, so contemporary,   How often I think of the lines I quoted above about the "lottery of birth," its impact on me and my sister, and indeed on everyone.  Consider Donald Trump, born a millionaire son of a racist, domineering father who instilled in him a dog-eat-dog, zero-sum game worldview and life philosophy.  Then consider the overwhelming majority of other human beings on this planet.  William Blake never would have fallen for Bill Clinton's brazen bullshit that all you need to succeed in America, or anywhere, is to work hard and play by the rules.

I'm thinking today of the opening stanzas of Blake's London:

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. 

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear 

Are we not today utterly beset by Blake's "mind-forged manacles"? We are surrounded by agents hellbent on mining our weaknesses and causing us woes.  Misinformation, disinformation, lies, misleading half-truths, messages expertly designed by marketers, advertisers, politicians, public relations professionals, foreign and domestic "influencers," and hidden persuaders to make us unhappy about this, that, or the other thing, to make us want something we don't have, this product or that service, this politician in office rather than that..  We live each day in a war zone in which the mission of the warriors is to penetrate our conscious and subconscious mind to affect our behaviors not for our benefit, but for the benefit of the persuaders.

Prednisone, day 5.   I've heard too many stories of patients being quickly healed of their PMR pains after 1 or 2 days on prednisone.  I worry that on the morning of day 5, my shoulders will still painful and my fingers stiff and painful.  My lower back stiffens up as usual after being on my feet and active for a while, though I am not as concerned about that as I am about the shoulders and hands/fingers.  The final step in the diagnostic tests for PMR is responsiveness to prednisone.  Am I misdiagnosed, or simply expecting too much, too soon, considering how wracked I was just 5 days ago and how much better I have been since?

Dem boids.  Lilly showed up at about 6:30 and I let her out at 6:45.  I turned on the Merlin app on my iPhone and Merlin said the air was filled with the sounds of a Northern Cardinal, an American Robin, a House Sparrow, and a Brown-Headed Cowbird.  Spring has sprung.

Leo Bloom: I beg your pardon?

Concierge:  Who d'ya want? Nobody gets in the building unless I know who they want. I'm the "concierge". My husband used to be the "concierge", but he's dead. Now I'M the "concierge".

Max Bialystock:  We are seeking Franz Liebkind.

Concierge:  Oh... the Kraut! He's on the top floor, apartment 23.

Max Bialystock:  Thank you...

Concierge: ...But you won't find him there... he's up on the roof with his boids. He keeps boids. Dirty... disgusting... filthy... lice-ridden boids. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop like a person. Not anymore! No, sir! Boids!... You get my drift?

Leo Bloom:  We... uh... get your "drift". Thank you, madam.

Concierge:  I'm not a "madam"! I'm a "concierge"!

Major Accomplishments:  (1) I lay down on my bed for the first time in two months.  (2)  I was able to get up and out of bed from lying down on my left shoulder.  (3) I stripped my bed and washed the linens.