8/21/24

 Wednesday, August 21, 2024

1968 Democratic Convention opened in Chicago, went on to nominate Hubert Humphrey

2014 Israeli airstrike in Rafah killed Mohammed Abu Shammala, Raed al Atar and Mohammed Barhoum - 3 of Hamas's top commanders   

In bed at 9:20 p.m., after falling asleep reading Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy at about 8:30(?), awake at 2:20, and up and about at 2:55 a.m   Lilly is sound asleep next to her mattress on the TV room floor, sleeping so soundly I kept looking at her belly to see if she had died overnight, till I saw her shoulder twitch and realized she is still with us.  I dozed off at some point and half-slept till 6:30 when I let Lilly out.

Prednisone, day 101, 10 mg., day 8/28.   I took the 10 mg. at 6:30 a.m. with some banana bread.  I took the morning meds plus 650 mg. Tylenol at 7:10.

Volvo annual servicing at Fields Volvo in Waukesha.  New battery, new front outer tie rods, wheels alignment, replace rear brakes, replace license plate light bulb.  $3,148.49.  Arrggh!

Meandering thoughts from Mormon Heaven to Vietnam.  There is a reprint of a 2020 story by McKay Coppins in this morning's The Atlantic online: "The Most American Religion."  He wrote it during the initial shocking onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic and it reminded me of all the prophylactic precautions most of us were taking in those days: masks, of course, and obsessive handwashing and disinfectants, and temperature-taking before being allowed into some buildings.  The essay reminded me of my long-ago discussion with Tom St. John about whether eternal life is a desirable thing or not and his wished-for version of my (probably erroneous) understanding of Morman Heaven: a physical place where the righteous live in their physical, exalted, uncorrupted bodies together with their families, as on Earth but with no sin, disease, wickedness of any kind.  Happy, happy, happy, joy, joy, joy.  Mostly though, the Coppins story made me wonder, as I so often do, how people can believe the stuff they claim to believe - Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Calvinists, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Shintoists, Scientologists, Branch Davidians, take your pick.  Each of these belief systems requires some belief in the unbelievable.  It may be Joseph Smith's tablets, Catholicism's transubstantiation, or the most fundamental belief in a personal God who loves and monitors our behaviors, his eye on the sparrow.  Or the notion that we are made in the image of God.  What does that say about God?  

On the way back from Waukesha in my loaner car, I got to admiring the highway infrastructure, especially the I-94 I-45 interchange with its impressive three-dimensional, intersecting bridges and ramps. Then I got to thinking of how much that infrastructure, indeed all infrastructure, means to us and how fortunate we are that we don't worry about it all being blown to smithereens by high explosives, unlike, for example, our fellow humans in Gaza and in Ukraine.  We call ourselves homo sapiens and homo faber, man the wise and man the maker, but as a species, we could more accurately be called homo vastator or homo extinctor, man the destroyer or annihilator.  I have in mind the words I read last night in Max Hastings' Vietnam book: 

On June 16 [1965], McNamara announced reinforcements that would raise the troop level to seventy thousand [including me.]  Two days later, giant USAF B-52s began to attack alleged communist troop concentrations in South Vietnam.  In the eight years that followed, the bombers carried out 126,615 so-called Arc Light sorties, dropping four million tons of bombs.  Aircrew considered them milk runs.  Pilot Doug Cooper shrugged.  "The job had all the excitement of being a long-haul truck driver without being able to stop for coffee."  A navigator said he felt that he and his crew just bombed an endless succession  of map coordinates "that seemed to do nothing except put holes in the jungle floort."  From mid-1968 onward, ordnance was released not on the judgment of bombadiers but instead that of Skyspot radar operators on the ground.  The B-52s operating over South Vietnam and later Cambodia and Laos faced no threat from enemy action, merely a slight risk of accidents.  Most of these elderly monsters suffered from corrosion: one had its bombs fall off the wing racks onto the runway during takeoff, because of wiring corroded  by rain and sea salt.  In eight years, just twelve Arc Light planes were lost to such mishaps.  The B-52s sufferd very little to destroy very much.

These words reminded me of course of myself and my fellow Marines in the TACC in Danang, how casual we were as we went about our usual business of keeping track of all the thousands of sorties we marked up on our status board, day and night, day in and day out, outbound and inbound, each carrying death and destruction somewhere:  F-4 Phantoms, F-8 Crusaders, A-4 Skyhawks, A-6 Intruders, 250 pound, 500 pound, 2,000-pound bombs, 20 mm. cannons, napalm, white phosphorus, Agent Orange.  All of us were cogs in the huge machine delivering Death and Destruction to the millions of Southeast Asian humans who had no more control over the decisions of their governments than we had over the decisions of our government, yet there we were, killing one another on orders from above.  They did what Uncle Ho and General Giap required of them; we did what LBJ, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, and General Westmoreland required of us.  I don't recall myself or any of my fellow Marines giving a thought to the human beings our aircraft were killing, dismembering, maiming, burning, or poisoning.  It was all in a day's work, as it was for the B-52 bomber crews dropping 4,000,000 tons of bombs over 8 years.  I wrote in my memoir:

Most of the work was routine and unexciting: keeping track of aircraft, listening to the radios. . . . 

When a military person works in a technical support role such as I had in Vietnam, he or she doesn’t experience directly the lethality of the enterprise he or she is supporting, at least not on a regular basis.  We didn’t see the dead people.  We didn’t hear screaming or crying.  Life can easily become a matter of routine, of regularly rotating watches, of greasy Spam sandwiches every third night, and Black Label and Blackjack on the other nights.  Being such a small cog on such a large and lethal killing machine, it becomes easy to avoid thinking in terms of any personal responsibility for the suffering and loss that are the inevitable consequences if not the very purposes of modern warfare.  Front line troops don’t share this immunity.  

We drank a lot of liquor, smoked a lot of cigarettes and did a lot of gambling in Danang.  The drinking and gambling occurred at the officers’ club at night. . .  We knew we were involved in a lethal enterprise, some of us directly, others of us indirectly.  We knew that Americans and Vietnamese were dying and being injured every day.  But we didn’t normally see the results of our efforts.  Quiet drunkenness was commonplace . . .

Many thoughts bounce around in my head as I write these words and remember those 234 days in Vietnam and 4 years in the Marines.  I', not sure what to make of any of them, but they don't make me proud of myself or of my country and its government. 

Our good neighbor John McGregor has been diagnosed with leukemia.  Very sad news.  He's a great neighbor and a very good man.

8/20/24

 Tuesday, August 20, 2024

1953 General Fazlollah Zahedi arrested the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in a CIA-supported coup d'état

1968 During the night, 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to put down the Prague Spring

In bed at 9, awake at 4, and up and out at 4:10.  Lilly showed up to be let out at 5:30.   

Prednisone, day 100, 10 mg., day 7/28.  I took the 10 mg. at 5:15 a.m. followed by some banana bread.  Morning meds plus 650 mg. of Tylenol at 7 a.m.

Major accomplishment!  I went down the stairway into the basement this afternoon, holding my 'hard copy' daily journal entries from July 13th through yesterday and, more importantly, I was able to get UP the stairs, though it was iffy.  While I was done there I tried unsuccessfully to get the Roku remote controls to turn on the television.  No luck.  I painted over an 18" X 24" canvas with a geometric painting that I never liked and had sitting in the workroom.  I covered the canvas with opaque titanium white so I could reuse it.  I enjoyed listening to La Boheme while repainting the canvas and while drawing grid lines on a photocopy of Klimt I've been meaning to try for months, the one for which I had vainly hoped Peter would help me stretch a canvas onto the expensive stretcher bars I bought for it.  Now I'm thinking I'll try it first on the painted-over 18"  24" canvas.  I suspect I am not capable of stretching canvas over the longer stretcher bars by myself.  (While in the basement,, I checked the water softener and saw it was almost out of salt.  The extra bag of salt I had down there was too heavy for me to lift to the top of the water softener.  I'll need help from one of the 'boys.') 

Genocide vel non.  There is a long essay on the definition of "genocide" in last Sunday's NY Times Magazine.  The author points out that only the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which Bosnian Serb fighters took roughly 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys to predetermined sites before killing them and throwing their bodies into mass graves, and the Rwandan massacres of Tutsis by Hutu militias in 1994 have been found to fit the legal definition of genocide.  The issue is salient because of what has been happening in Gaza since October 7th, but, regardless of how the International Court of Justice resolves the issue in South Africa's case against Israel, genocide for most of us is like pornography was to Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio - we may not be able to define it, but "[We] know it when [we] see it."  Israel fails that test, not only for the almost total destruction of Gaza's infrastructure necessary to sustain life but especially for its blocking of humanitarian aid from reaching Gazan civilians and the use of starvation and famine as a military strategy.  The ICJ may find Israel not guilty, but the world doesn't.

Banana bread.  I had three quite ripe bananas staring at me and daring me to try to make banana bread, which I did.  The bananas were not quite as ripe as I thought and it took a bit of force to get them properly mashed.  I chose a recipe pretty much at random from a bunch of them on the internet. . .  It turned out delicious, the best I've ever made.

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

1 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup mashed bananas

2 large eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup chopped pecans

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8x4-inch loaf pans. Set aside.

Step 2

Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Stir in bananas, eggs, oil, pecans, and vanilla. Pour batter into the prepared pans.

Step 3

Bake in the preheated oven for 45 to 60 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing from the pans.

A Handful of Dust.  We watched the opening scenes of this movie adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel last night.  I remembered reading some Waugh in Father Bruckner's elective English course on The English Catholic Literary Revival, along with Chesterton, Greene, and who else?  I knew early on that I wouldn't enjoy the film, despite Kristin Scott Thomas and Judy Dench, because its characters are upper-crust Brits living in a palace.  I have a knee-jerk antipathy to British 'swells', perhaps because of my peasant Irish roots.  In any event, we turned it off and moved on to something else before I went to bed.  I wondered about the title and turned to Google to be reminded that it came presumably from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, in Part 1, "The Burial of the Dead": "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."  The allusion is to death and mortality and perhaps the meaningless of life after World War I.  " I could not / Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, / Looking into the heart of light, the silence. "  The epigraph to the poem is from The Satyricon by Petronius, and refers to the Sybil:

The speaker sees the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage or bottle, and when he asks her what she wants, the Sibyl replies, ‘I want to die.’ She wants to die because, according to the myth, she asked the gods for eternal life or, more accurately, to be able to live for as many years as she had grains of sand in her hand.

But she forgot to ask for eternal youth, with the result that the Sibyl was destined to live effectively forever, but to grow older and frailer and weaker, a decaying shadow of her former self. She had managed to evade the usual short human lifespan, but at what cost?  

As I read of the Sybil, I thought of Micaela's visit yesterday, and of Tom's shocking death while snorkeling off the Virgin Islands.  I thought, though I would never say it, that Tom was fortunate to have avoided many of the ravages of old age, like chronic pain, arthritis, internal and external ulcers, inflammations, etc. Pity party stuff.  And I recalled the discussion Tom and I shared many years ago before attending the Rep's A Christmas Carol about whether we would like to live forever, he saying "yea" and I saying "nay."  Tom's 'yea' was predicated on avoiding the Sybil's mistake; he conditioned his assent to everlasting life on a healthy, vigorous, pain and disease-free body and mind.  Even with Tom's precondition, I opted out of eternity precisely because of its unendingness, its stasis.  Isn't it the fact that it is temporary that gives life value?  I think of Peter Cook on top of the mailbox in Bedazzled bored with the Beatific Vision.  "You're so great, you're so good, you're so marvelous, . ."  How often when in intense pain I have wished to be dead.  To be or not to be?  Not to be, when to be is dreadful.  Is this unusual?  or common?

I'm so glad we skipped the Democratic National Convention coverage last night.  It's unforgivable that Biden's speech didn't start until about 11:30 at night, Eastern time, an hour and a half past my bedtime and maybe Biden's bedtime too.  Biden's speech lasted 52 minutes, and Michelle Goldberg described it as his "shouted speech." 'His shouted speech left me relieved he's not the candidate.'  Ruth Marcus in this morning's WaPo: " I have to say, listening to Biden, I felt gratitude for his service, but even more, gratitude for the fact that he is not the nominee and is edging out of the spotlight.  Dana Milbank: "I did have a sense midway through it that I am very happy this is not his acceptance speech."  Is there a worse public speaker than Joe Biden?  He's had a long lifetime to polish his speaking skills and never succeeded.  Is this because of his stuttering challenge or something else?  In any case, I knew I would skip his speech last night whenever it was given.  From what I've read, it was sameo, sameo Joe.  Apparently, Hilary gave a rousing speech as did Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.  I'll try to find AOC's speech on YouTube.

Anniversaries thoughts.  Lest we forget who started the fight between the U.S. and Iran.  Lest we forget how good the U.S. is at interfering with the internal affairs of other sovereign nations.  Lest we forget that the U.S. government was acting on behalf of its owners, the oil industry and the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower was to warn us about on his way out of office in 1961 and that Eisenhower was president when the CIA and the Brits plotted to oust  Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had nationalized Iran's oil industry, and to install Shah Reza Pahlavi.

Second, we were horrified when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956 and invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and invaded Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022, but we forget the Monroe Doctrine and our invasions of Central American countries in the Banana Wars and of Caribbean countries over the years, our support of military coups in South America, as well as the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, Vietnam, and Iraq.  USA, USA, USA!!!!

Geri's MRI of her knee was this morning.  Fingers crossed, hoping for some relief.  The knee pain has deprived her of the whole summer of gardening, enjoying riding her bike, walking Lilly, etc.  

AOC's speech at the DNC.  I watched it on YouTube.  I love her, the Bartender from the Bronx.  Bernie Sanders speaks tonight.  I'll watch him on YouTube as well.  Dies in the wool Lefties.

8/19/24

 Monday, August 19, 2924

1944 Catherine Monica Clausen was born.

In bed at 9:35, awake at 4:15, and up and out at 4:45 to let Lilly out.  I had thoughts of KItty on awakening, a lifetime of loving, caring, and good work, a blessing to her family, friends, and so many strangers she treated as friends, a Good Samaritan and Good Shepherd, a loving daughter, mother, sister, friend, a mensch. 

Prednisone, day 99, 10 mg., day 6/28.   I took the 10 mg. at 5 a.m. followed by All Bran and berries at 6 a.m. and morning meds and 1300 mg. of Tylenol at 7.   This morning, the hip, the thigh (bone?), and the knee are all painful this morning.

I Heard Your Voice In The

Wind Today

I heard your voice in the wind today

and I turned to see your face; The warmth of the wind caressed me

as I stood silently in place. I felt your touch in the sun today

as its warmth filled the sky; I closed my eyes for your embrace

and my spirit soared high.

 I saw your eyes in the window pane

as I watched the falling rain; It seemed as each raindrop fell

it quietly said your name. I held you close in my heart today

it made me feel complete; You may have died...but you are not gone

you will always be a part of me. As long as the sun shines... the wind blows...

the rain falls... You will live on inside of me forever for that is all my heart knows.

 On this date in 1944, in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, a beautiful and courag, and saintly 21-year-old mother, who was one of God’s gifts to this world,  gave birth to a daughter who was destined to become an image of her mother, beautiful, courageous, and saintly, another of God’s gifts to the world.  When Mother Mary brought the precious daughter home to her little basement apartment, her waiting brother, about to turn 3 years old, is reported to have said “Take her back.  She doesn’t play.”  That was just the first of many mistakes that almost 3-year-old brother would make in his life, but he learned soon enough that that new sister of his, would become throughout 2 long lifetimes, his best friend, his confidante, his soul-sister as well as his biological sister.  He would come to love and admire her as she grew into a woman like their mother: beautiful in so many ways, courageous in so many ways, and saintly in so many ways.  As they grew older and older, with lifetimes of living behind them, the brother would share his belief in the saintliness of his sister with their father, who would chuckle because he sometimes saw her when she was impatient, or ‘bossy’ or angry at one thing or another. The now-old brother would suggest to the even older father that he just didn’t know what real saints looked like.  The saintly sister herself would join in dismissing the idea that she was St. Kitty of Emerald Avenue and the brother would have to remind her and their father that real saints aren’t God and they are not angels - they are all human beings who get impatient, ‘bossy’, and even angry at times.  What makes them saints was described by Jesus in Chapter 25 of the Gospel of St. Matthew:  I was hungry and you gave me food.  I was thirsty and you gave me water.  I was sick and you cared for me.  I needed a home and you took you into your home.  So of course the brother, who had made many mistakes in his own life over many years, was not mistaken in describing his sister, who he loved so much, as a Saint.  Nor is he mistaken in thanking God for giving him the blessing of his beautiful, courageous, and saintly sister, so very much like their dear mother.

8/18/24

 Sunday, August 18, 2024

1963 James Meredith became the 1st Black graduate from the University of Mississippi

In bed at 9, awake at 3:15 from a dream of golfing with DPL and DEG, replacing my Allen Edmonds shoes with DPL's golf shoes, also ruminating on how long Geri and I can stay in this house, brought on by our bad knees, up at 3:45.  I let Lilly out at 3:50.  She stood on the sidewalk alternating looking north and then back at me in the vestibule, then looking south then back at me, and finally turned around and came back in without venturing onto the lawn to relieve herself.  She is 7 weeks shy of her 15th birthday on October 8, very old for her size and breed.  She has always been nervous and cautious.  Her looking back to make sure that I'm still there at the doorway is very much like her behavior in the years when we would take her to the Mequon dog park and let her run free.  She would get rather far from us but always made a point of looking back to ensure that we were still there behind her.  We don't think she sees very well anymore and she may be stone deaf.  We know she can't persevere much longer;. We dread losing her and treat her as venerable.  I let her out again at 6 a.m., with some cloud-shrouded daylight available to assist her vision, and this time she relieved herself.  I  Iet her out again at 8 a.m. when she declined Geri's opening the door for her, and insisted that I perform my doorman duty for her.  She's fussy that way.😊

Prednisone, day 98, 10 mg., day 5/28,  I took 1300 mg. of Tylenol at 4:20 a.m.   I took my 10 mg. of prednisone at 5:25 with two slices of buttered Dave's Bread.  I took the morning meds at 6:45.

What effect has the cortisone (or whatever) injection in my right hip had?  I still have pain, often pretty nasty pain in the hip, but I'm able to stand and get around (usually with the help of my rollator) much better than I was before the injection.  I can get out of the house and 'run' (in a manner of speaking, errands, but I still have almost preclusive difficulties with steps/stairs, especially if there is nothing to hold onto for support, as is the case with the front stoop with no railing or door.  I have more than a month's worth of printed daily journal entries sitting on top of the printer because I am afraid to take them down to my desk in the basement to add to the pile of 2 year's worth of other entries because I am afraid that I would not be able to climb the stairs up from the basement.  I need a powered stairway chair.  

The apotheosis of Joe Biden, cont'd.  There is a very long piece in today's New York Times Magazine titled Joe Biden’s Interrupted Presidency: He sought the office nearly all his life. When he finally got there, it brought out his best — and eventually his worst.  One notable excerpt:

He presided over the hearings for Clarence Thomas’sembattled nomination to the Supreme Court, when Anita Hill accused the judge of sexual harassment. Biden’s willingness to indulge Republicans on the committee who sought to turn the hearing into a referendum of Hill’s character, and his decision not to call as witnesses more women who were ready to testify with claims similar to Hill’s, were widely criticized. At the start of his 2020 presidential campaign, knowing this painful history would be exhumed, Biden called Hill to express regret. She then publicly declined to call his words an apology and said she remained unconvinced he had taken responsibility.

I've never trusted Biden after that 1991 hearing when he threw Anita Hill (and the country) under the bus rather than displease his Republican friends on the committee.  I remember especially Orrin Hatch and Arlen Spector savaging Hill while Biden left her utterly unassisted by available corroborating witnesses waiting at a nearby hotel with Shirley Wiegand, who would later become our friend and faculty colleague at MULS.  Through her, we later met Anita Hill personally.

Are Zionism and the State of Israel causes of antisemitism?  Peter Beinart has an opinion piece in this morning's NYTimes, Harris Can Change Biden’s Policy on Israel Just by Upholding the Law, in which he points out what should be clear to everyone, i.e., that the U.S. government applies the Leahy Law to every nation except perhaps the worst offender of it, the State of Israel.  The Leahy Law prohibits the United States from assisting any unit of a foreign security force that commits “gross violations” of human rights. Aid can be reinstated if the foreign country adequately punishes the perpetrators.  The law has been enforced hundreds of times against many nations but never against the State of Israel which has been credibly accused of gross human rights violations, war crimes, and even genocide.  One can hardly read a national newspaper or other journal in recent years, but especially since October 7, 2023, without reading of outrages committed by IDF and other instrumentalities of the Israeli government, i.e., Jewish settlers, against Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank.**  In the Biden administration, the person who ensures that no sanction is applied to Israel is Tony Blinken, Biden's Secretary of State, who personally takes responsibility for Leahy Law decisions concerning Israel.  Blinken is Jewish.  Does he decide Leahy issues with Israel because of his Jewish identity?  Is that an antisemitic question to ask?  He has made his support of the State of Israel abundantly clear on his trips to Israel after October 7.  To what extent is that support tied to his Jewish identity?  The question arises because of the widespread confusion between the State of Israel as a self-defined "Jewish state" and world Jewry.  Many Jews, perhaps even most, are Zionists, but not all are.  Even among Zionist Jews, not all support the Likud Party in Israel, or the extreme racist, right-wing coalition government of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich.  To the extent that we identify Israel with the Jewish people, to that extent we make possible the smearing of all Jews with the crimes of the Israeli rightwingers.  To the extent that Jews in Israel and in the diaspora decline to condemn the crimes of Israel's government and military, to that extent, they invite antisemitism and questions like, Does Blinken refuse to apply the Leahy Law to Israel because he is a Jew?  The U.S. does not have a mutual defense treaty with Israel as we do, for example, with other NATO nations, yet we have two aircraft carriers and other forces in the Mediterranean and Red Seas and elsewhere, standing by to engage in deadly warfare with Iran, Hezbollah, and other hostile forces who are primed to attack Israel because of Israel's assassinations in Beirut and Teheran.

** Elsewhere in this morning's Times, there is a story headlined "A Family Flees and a Mother Mourns After Israeli Settlers Attack a Palestinian Village."  A Palestinian man was killed and 4 houses and 6 vehicles were burned, as confirmed by the IDF.  

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza, attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians across the West Bank have become common. There have been about 1,250 such attacks in this time, according to the United Nations — 25 in the past week alone.

More than 589 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or Jewish settlers in the West Bank since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health officials. Eighteen Israelis have been killed in the territory in the same time period, according to the United Nations.

Multiple residents said the Israeli army was preventing ambulances and fire trucks from entering the village. The Israeli military denied the accusations.

I no longer believe much of anything said by the IDF or the Israeli government concerning outrages and predation on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.  The troops are there to protect the Jewish settlers, not the Palestinians, consistent with what Israel has become: a racist, apartheid state.

Anniversary thought: James Meredith, Ole Miss, 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. and then the 13th and 14th Amendments.  We Americans call this "progress."

 

8/17/24

 Saturday, August 17, 2024

1943 498 British bombers attacked Peenemunde (development base for the V weapons)

1946 George Orwell published "Animal Farm" in the United Kingdom

1998 Bill Clinton admitted he had an "improper physical relationship" with Monica Lewinsky and that he "misled people" about the relationship

2005 The first forced evacuation of settlers from Gaza began as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan

In bed a little after 9, awake at ? and up at 3:30.  I let Lilly out at 5 and dozed off at some point till 6:30 or so.    

Prednisone, day 97, 10 mg., day 4/28.   I took the 10 mg. at 5 a.m. with 4 saltines and my morning meds at 6:45. I applied diclofenac at 3:30, and again at 9:30, with my knee and hip quite painful this morning.  I took 1300 mg. of Tylenol at 11:30, giving up on my resolution to stop putting my liver at risk for an analgesic that is so poor at relieving osteoarthritis pain.  Desperate people, desperate things, and all that.

More on the apotheosis of Joe B.  I am still so angered by Joe B's arrogance in running for reelection and his protracted refusal to bow out as it became increasingly clear that he could never outpoll Trump in November that I'm loathe even to write his family name, of which he is so unreasonably proud.  "My honor as a Biden" and all that. Nonetheless, I note that despite all the praise that was and still is thrown at him for his 'selflessness' and 'patriotism' in finally withdrawing from the race in which he was destined to get "shellacked" as Obama might say, he hasn't fooled Maureen Dowd who writes in this morning's NYTimes:

[A]t some point, when the polls cratered, Democratic mandarins decided to put the welfare of the party — and the country — ahead of the president’s ego, and stop catering to his self-regarding fantasy that he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump. Also, they all could know that Biden was slowing faster than he and his family and his inner circle were acknowledging.  Biden went from looking “forward to getting back on the campaign trail” to gone in one weekend, with the handprints of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries on the president’s back. . .     

The president already resented Obama for shoving him aside for Hillary, and he resented Hillary for squandering that opportunity and losing to Trump. Even though Obama tried to do everything quietly to protect his saintly status, Joe was furious that Obama was sidelining him twice. 

She points out that despite all the real and faux jubilation in the Democratic Party, everybody's mad at somebody.  Joe won't talk to Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, or Jeffries.  Joe, Jill, and Hunter - all self-catering fantasists - are mad at everybody.  Ron Klain still thinks it was wrong to push Joe out. After all, he won the primaries in which he was virtually unopposed because he froze everyone else out.

I was surprised to learn that Michelle Obama, perhaps at least the equal of her husband in popularity and at fundraising, has shunned Joe B's family and political events ever since Joe's family ostracized Huner's first wife, Kathleen Buhle, after her messy divorce from Hunter.  Hunter of course promptly took up with brother Beau's widow, Hallie B.  Obama has privately described the Biden family dynamics as "weird shit," according to one knowledgable source, which reminds me of so many reasons why I have long distrusted and misbelieved Joe B's shtick about his family and why I have believed that Obama said 'Don't underestimate Joe's ability to fuck things up.' Now he has fucked up the Democratic primaries, the Democratic Party, and the 2024 presidential election, and with his overinflated ego and self-catering fantasies, he thinks he's the one who has been wronged.  Please, pass the basin, and remind me not to watch his speech Monday night at the DNC convention.

Sweet sour cabbage borscht.  I manage to make every iteration of this favorite soup an adventure.  I am never sure of what the final product will taste like.  Yesterday I had to go on errands to the hardware store (ant traps), wild Birds Unlimited(suet cakes), Sendik's (fruits, vegetables, groceries), and the pet store (Lilly's kibble) while the beef stock was supposed to be simmering but was boiling.  What effect, if any, will this have?  Then, I bought a head of cabbage that was too small, so my soup may be pretty thin and 'soupy.'  The last batch I made was too thick and I had to add a second can of diced tomatoes to thin it.  Today, too thin.  The last batch ended up quite tasty.  Keeping my fingers crossed for this batch. . . . 4 p.m.. report: the borscht is tasty.  At first, I was a bit put off by the dill flavoring in the soup, perhaps because I had never included the 1/4 cup of chopped fresh dill in prior iterations but when I consumed a whole bowl of the soup, I found I enjoyed it, dill and all.

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975 by Max Hastings.   I've been listening to and reading portions of the lengthy tome.  Today I focused on the mess in Saigon and throughout South Vietnam in 1964 and early 1965, the period before I received my orders to the 1st MAW.   President Diem had been assassinated in a military coup on November 2, 1963, and replaced by ARVN generals. led by General Dương Văn Minh who was eventually replaced by General Nguyễn Khánh who was then replaced by a triumvirate of himself and Gererals Duong Van Minh and Tran Thien Khiem who were replaced by a "High National Council" that elected Phan Khắc Sửu as its Chairman who were replaced by Phan Khắc Sửu as the new President of South Vietnam and Trần Văn Hương as Prime Minister who were replaced by General Khánh who led a group of military officers called the "Young Turks" in a coup. They dissolved the civilian High National Council,  With all the confusion and in-fighting among the South Vietnamese generals and lack of civilian leadership in Saigon, there were continuing demonstrations by Buddhists against both the government and the American 'imperialists',' continuing successful attacks by the VC on ARVN and American forces and on Catholic and other villages, continuing attacks on LBJ by Republicans, especially by Richard Nixon and by Barry Goldwater who was running against LBJ for the US presidency. Goldwater had suggested the use of nuclear weapons during the campaign.  What was clear was that South Vietnam was going to lose the war because of its own internal divisions and inability to govern the country, especially the countryside.  That was the background to the American invasion with the 3rd Marine Division in March 1965 and my sorry arrival a few months later.  Reading and thinking about this history now is painful, like recalling a comedy of errors.  By the end of 1964, Two hundred and sixteen American soldiers were killed in the war in 1964.  23,310 U.S. military personnel were in South Vietnam at the end of the year.  By the time this comedy of American and South Vietnamese errors was finished, more the 58,000 Americans would be killed, and perhaps a couple million Vietnamese.  What did we learn from this military and political misadventure?  Next to nothing, witness Iraq, witness Afghanistan,

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, it took almost 500 bombers to attack Peenemunde and the V rocket program.  Today, a single missile could do the job.  We call this "progress."

Second, in Animal Farm, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.  In America, no one is above the law, except for those who are above the law because of wealth and power.  In American foreign polity, no nation is above the Leahy Law, except Israel.

Third, we tend to forget what a bum Bill Clinton was.  We tend to forget that Trump is not the first president to be accused of forcible rape.  We tend not to ask why Hilary Clinton chose him of all people to marry and to stay married to.

Fourth, the Israeli people, including those in government, remember what the forced evacuation of the Jewish settlements in Gaza was like in 2005.  It was nothing compared to what a forced withdrawal of 500,00 or 700,000 Jews from the settlements and outposts in the West Bank would be like today, a true civil war with unknowable outcomes for the State of Israel.  So much for the two-state solution to to Zionist conundrum.

8/15/24

 Thursday, August 15, 2024

“I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.”― Henry David Thoreau, Walden  This applies to me, with a consciousness of shame and guilt for a thousand complicities on top of individual 'things said or done long years ago, or things I did not do or say . . .'  I think of the tracking shot of the checkout lanes in the supermarket in Godard's Tout Va Bien, what it requires to live in this culture, what it required for Thoreau to separate from his, and what it would take to separate from ours?  Courage, will, purpose.

. . . . . 

1549 Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier came ashore at Kagoshima, Japan

1876 US law removed Indians from Black Hills after gold find

1917 Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met at Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh

. . . . .

In bed by 10 p.m., awake around 3:40, up and out at 4:10 to let Lilly out.  She seems increasingly confused in her old age.  

Prednisone, day 96, 10 mg., day 3/28.   I took the 10 mg. at 5:20 with cottage cheese, blackberries, and raspberries.  Morning meds at 9:10 a.m.  The photo is of my daily morning meds, my polypharmacy, less the hydrochlorothiazide, and 3 tabs of misoprostol which I have stopped taking, perhaps foolishly.  I think I empty my bladder frequently enough that increasing the frequency with HCT would be a problem.  I stopped taking the 3 tabs of misoprostol after my ER visit in November 2023 when I eliminated all caffeinated, carbonated, artificially sweetened, and alcoholic liquids from my diet, now almost 9 months of abstinence.  Also, I had the lesions in my bladder fulgurated in outpatient surgery on March 5, 2024, and the surgery obviated chronic bladder/pelvic pain.   Adding these meds would have me up to 15 pills per day plus the prednisone.  Also, I stopped taking 3,000 mg. of Tylenol for the hip and knee arthritis pain (another 6 pills) but I'm thinking I need to try something for pain relief and increased mobility.  Try Tylenol again despite uncertainty about effectiveness, or move on to NSAIDs and risk stomach ulcers because of their ulcerative side effects on top of the prednisone's ulcerative side effects.

The Haditha Massacre; the Marine Corps' My Lai.  I have listened to the first 5 episodes of The New Yorker podcast IN THE DARK, Series 3. about the massacre of 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005.  It is a horrible, chilling report of mass murder by U.S. Marines, murders for which no one went to prison.  From Wikipedia:

Three officers were officially reprimanded for failing to properly initially report and investigate the killings. On December 21, 2006, eight Marines from 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines were charged in connection with the incident.  By June 17, 2008, six defendants had their cases dropped and a seventh was found not guilty.  The exception was former Staff Sergeant, now-Private Frank Wuterich. On October 3, 2007, the Article 32 hearing investigating officer recommended that charges of murder be dropped and Wuterich be tried for negligent homicide in the deaths of two women and five children.  Further charges of assault and manslaughter were ultimately dropped; Wuterich was convicted of a single count of negligent dereliction of duty on January 24, 2012. Wuterich received a rank reduction and pay cut but avoided jail time.  

The upcoming episodes will report on the coverup by the Marines and DOD.  What has been most chilling to me has been listening to the gung-ho death talk by individual Marines, e.g., speaking of their disappointment at not having killed anyone yet, or cavalierly dismissing the deaths of the Iraqi civilians as collateral damage.  The murders were cold-blooded, not in the heat of battle, and they included women and young children.  I believe that we can assume that these Marines were not murderers before they enlisted in the Marine Corps, but they were prepped to become murderers at MCRD Parris Island and San Diego, and at infantry training before deploying to Iraq.  We didn't get the same kind of prepping at T&T Regiment and Basic School in 1962 and 1963, but we got enough of that 'lean, green, killing machine' stuff.  We did know that the business of the Marine Corps is killing people and destroying stuff and we were all volunteers, i.e., we had a pretty clear idea of what we were signing up for.  I think back to Full Metal Jacket and the brutalizing indoctrination of boot Marine boot camp, and I shiver.  What were we thinking?

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, Francis Xavier.  I'm not a big fan of missionaries, especially missionaries directly tied to colonial, mercantile imperialism, as Xavier was to the Portuguese Empire in Asia.

And speaking of empires, in the westward expansion of the American White Empire, once it was discovered that "there's gold in them thar hills", the Indigenous tribes were screwed.  Another treaty broken by our government, another violation of the so-called Rule of Law in obedience to the REAL rules of law:  He who has the gold makes the rules, and the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.  USA, USA, USA!!!

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, are two favorite poets.  Sassoon's The Hero reminds me, painfully, of my days as CACO for north Philadelphia in 1966-67.

'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the mother said,

And folded up the letter that she'd read.

'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke

In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.

She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud

Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.

He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies

That she would nourish all her days, no doubt

For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes

Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,

Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,

Had panicked down the trench that night the mine

Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried

To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,

Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care

Except that lonely woman with white hair.

Owen's Dulce et Decorum is bitter and true:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Owen was killed in action in France one week before the Armistice was signed ending the war.  His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day.  Sassoon lived until age 80, dying in 1967.  He converted to Catholicism at age 70 for some uncertain reason.

8/16/24

 Friday, August 16, 2024

In bed by 9 and up and out at 4:50 (!!!) though the last couple hours may have been half-sleep.  Usual arthritic pains.   Lilly arrived to be let out at 5:15.  Wet outside.  We received .55" of rain in the last 24 hours with another .65" expected in the next 24.  Rainy spring, rainy summer. I gave her the normal 'coming in treat', which she consumed in the dining room, as usual (go figure), then she came into the TV room to lie down on her mattress and keep me company in the early morning.

Prednisone, day 97, 10 mg., day 4.  I took the 10 mg. at 5:05 and applied a strip of diclofenac to my knee before leaving the bedroom.  Does it help?  I took the morning meds at 7:20 after my breakfast Pink Lady apple.  I injected the weekly 3.0 mg. of Trulicity at 9:25 a.m. and applied more diclofenac to my knee after showering at 10:15.

Donald Trump on the Medal of Honor.  Trump said that the civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom is "much better" than the Medal of Honor for military valor on Thursday. "It's actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they're soldiers," Trump told supporters gathered at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Thursday.  "They're either in very bad shape because they've been hit so many times by bullets or they're dead. She gets it, and she's a healthy, beautiful woman, and they're rated equal." "She" is Miriam Adelson, the widow of Sheldon Adelson, one of his billionaire campaign donors, to whom he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.  The bone-headed remark is consistent with his disparagement of the veterans buried in France during World War I as "suckers" and "losers."  He of course denies saying this but it has been reliably reported by his own Chief of Staff, John Kelly, a 4-star Marine general.   On November 9, 2010, Kelly's 29-year-old son, First Lieutenant Robert Michael Kelly,[90] was killed in action when he stepped on a land mine while leading a platoon of Marines on a patrol in Afghanistan.   The younger Kelly was a former enlisted Marine and was on his third combat tour, his first combat tour as a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer. 

David Brooks on emotional intelligence.  In this morning's NYT column, Brooks writes of the expanding understanding of the role of emotions in our lives, not just our emotional lives, but also our rational lives.  He writes "[M]ost of us are emotionally inarticulate. If you are going to hire, marry, befriend, manage, or coach people, shouldn’t you know their core affect, the emotional baseline they carry through life? Shouldn’t you know their emotional profile, the distinctive way they construct emotions in diverse circumstances? Shouldn’t you know how good they are at discerning, labeling, and expressing their emotions?"  What caught my eye was the idea of a "core affect" and "emotional baseline."  It made me think of Kitty and myself, and the "core affects" we carried with us through life after growing up with our father and his post-war PTSD.  I thought of his core affect and how different it was from our mother's, despite her PTSD after Hartman's sexual assault.  My Dad's core affect was weltschmerz, a deep sadness grounded in what he saw and could never forget on Iwo Jima.  It wasn't that he could never experience moments of enjoyment, pleasure, and light-heartedness, but rather that, deep down, he was sad because he knew what men and nations are capable of.  He lived it in his time in the Marines, and mostly on Iwo Jima,  He could never entirely forget it.

On the other hand, my mother was subjected to a brutal rape at knifepoint and was slashed with defensive wounds on her hands.  Her children were threatened with stabbing.  Her home was ransacked.  Nonetheless, after a period of painful recovery, she was never a melancholy person, and never suffered from weltschmerz.  She was quite the contrary; the emotional baseline that she carried through life was optimistic, benevolent, and appreciative. 

I think that Kitty and I took on some of the emotional characteristics of both our parents. Kitty venerated our mother and took after her.  She never really recovered from her early death, a death that seemed so grossly unfair.  And she always felt rejected, unloved, and unappreciated by our father, a feeling I shared for much of my life, including the 13 years in which he and I never spoke with each other.  On reflection, though, I think both Kitty and I took on more of our father's "emotional core" than our mother's.  Each of us reminds me of the line apocryphally attributed to Yeats: 'Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.'  Long into our old age, we still talked of the pain of growing up with him,  Kitty theorized that he was jealous of us and that he resented the time, attention, and love that our mother devoted to us.  She was probably right about that but in any case, it was his 'abiding sense of tragedy' that Kitty and I carried into our adult lives, deep down, as our core affect, our emotional baseline.  We were both deeply thankful for the leavening effect of our mother's brighter contribution to who we became.  I'm thankful to David Brooks for alerting me to the notion of 'core affect" and the "emotional baseline' of people.

Trip to the dentist his morning for a cleaning and a filling of a very small cavity.  I enjoyed schmoozing with Anne Neary about our experiences teaching at Marquette, she at the Dental School and I at the Law School.  I was surprised to learn that some of the experiences I had as a faculty member at the law school were similar to hers at the Dental School, especially with respect to minority enrollment and its effect on grading, retention, and attrition rates.

In today's WaPo: Israel is redrawing the West Bank, cutting into a prospective Palestinian state, a report by Louisa Loveluck, Claire Parker, Sufian Taha and Lorenzo Tugnoli.  The facts reported in this story are too depressing for me to repeat here.  They tell the same story that has been known by the entire world since 1967, when Israel's military occupation of the West Bank began, since 1977 when Likud first gained control of the Israeli government under Menachim Begin, but especially since December, 2022, when Netanyahu's fascist, racist, apartheid government came to power and since October 7, 2023.  In all of its opprssive, illegal acts, the government of Israel has enjoyed the brazen complicity of the government of the United States.  Joe Biden has been especially disgraceful, a boot-licking toady.  Quaere:  what is Kamala Harris's position on Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank?  What is her position on the now seemingly impossible 'two-state solution' to the Israel-Palestinian conundrum?  What is her position on the correctness of the recend ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel's military occupation and civilian settlement of Palestinian lands areillegal and that the settlements and outposts should be depopulated forthwith, with reparations due to the dispossessed Palestinians?  If she follows Biden's lead, will she gain votes or lose votes?  What do American Jews expect (without suggesting that there is one position among America's many Jews!)?

Rampell vs. Moore.  While simmering my beef stock for tomorrow's sweet sour cabbage borscht, I turned on CNN and was delighted to see another of my favorite television events: Catherine Rampell eviscerating Ste[hen Moore, Heritage Foundation economist and right wing mouthpiece.  I haven't seen the two of them together for many moons.  She is so good.  And, BTW, not an Econ major nor a holder of an advanced degree in Econ.  All she has going for her is BRILLIANCE and hard work.