7/23/2025

 Wednesday, July 23, 2025

D+257/185/1276

1973 US President Richard Nixon refuses to release Watergate tapes of conversations in the White House relevant to the Watergate investigation

2020 US President Trump says he could send 75,000 federal agents to deal with violence in American cities like Portland, drawing backlash

In bed at 10:15, after watching the concluding episodes of Stick with Owen Wilson, up at 6:20.  70°, high of 87°.  Heat & humidity advisory    

Another favorite drawing: Caren and Rachel Goldberg at the Western Wall.  From a photo Caren posted on Facebook.  I was very pleased with the drawing, but I gave it to Caren with the thought that she (or Rachel) might enjoy it more.  I suppose that was presumptuous since each of them had access to the photograph, the drawing copied.   In any event, Caren still has the drawing and kindly sent me a photo of it, at my request, because I hadn't taken a photo of it before giving it to her.

Breakfast with CBG at Maxfield's at 9:30 this morning until 11, a thoroughly enjoyable visit, as usual, with continuous conversation, mostly about serious matters, but also about Stick.  I lent her a copy of my memoir, which was prompted mainly by our earlier chatting about growing up Irish Catholic, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.'s great quote:  

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,—"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".

Among our topics of conversation was how each of us felt about our grandchildren, and indeed all the children, at least in the U.S.  Caren sees in them hope for the future, while for me, they trigger sadness about the world I will be leaving them (not that it's mine to leave anyone.  In looking at my journal entry on this date last year, I see that I wrote about the film The Hours, with Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, and Ed Harris.  I concluded:

It is a depressing movie, reminding me in that respect of Paris, Texas, Midnight Cowboy, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange,  and Calvinist Paul Schrader films like Taxi Driver (screenwriter) and First Reformed and Master Gardener.  From Mrs. Dalloway:

“Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?”

“One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.”

I've had similar thoughts.

 I can't get moving today.  All I want to do is sleep.  No energy.

This is news???  The Wall Street Journal reported today that Pam Bondi reported to Trump back in May that his name appears multiple times in the Epstein files.   MSNBC and CNN are abuzz with this.😱

7/22/2025

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

D+256/184/1277

1946 The militant Zionist organization Irgun bombed the British headquarters for Palestine in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people and injuring 46

1991 Jeffrey Dahmer confessed to killing 17 men in 1978

In bed at 8:30, up at 5:25.  Nasty pain in both hips, mostly on the one I was sleeping on, but also the other.  Less pain in the shoulders.   I looked at my notes on this date last year and saw "awake at 4:45, up q5 5 at 00[sic]  with painful hip and lower back. Very painful to walk from bedroom to TV room.   . . . In the afternoon, I am experiencing throbbing pain, even sitting on the recliner. "   Two years ago on this date, I woke up with what was even then my normal backaches, moving about at will between my shoulder blades and my hips.   I wonder how long I've been spending each day with these arthritic/rheumatoid joints and back pains.  My journal entries from early August 2022 make no reference to them.  65°, high of 80°, extreme heat watch starting tomorrow.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 8:40 a.m.

<-  My favorite painting

There is an op-ed in this morning's NY Times by author and journalist Alissa Quart titled My Mother, the Artist, Discovered at 90.  Reading it prompted a lot of reflection on my part, none of which was particularly new, and saddened me.  Her mother is a retired professor of literature at CUNY.  She has cancer, and either the cancer or something else will kill her soon.  Throughout much of her life, she painted paintings.  We might call her a 'painter' or an 'artist', as her daughter has, but what she did was paint paintings - some 400 of them, which she kept throughout her lifetime.  Quart's essay describes her efforts to distribute her mother's paintings to keep them from being destroyed in one way or another after her mother's death.

I noticed early on that Quart never mentions her mother's name.  The mother is identified throughout the essay only by her relationship to her daughter, the narrator.  I went to Wikipedia to see if her mother is identified in Quart's listing there, but no, she is identified only as one of two "college professors" who parented Alissa.  I went to Elon Musk's AI engine GROK and asked it 'Who is Alissa Quart's mother; and it provided me only information based on the op-ed I'm writing about, concluding "Beyond her professional and artistic life, no specific details, such as her name, are provided in available sources."  The subject of the essay is still alive, her paintings are still extant, she is the subject of an essay by her famous, accomplished child, and nowhere do we learn her name.  I highlight this fact because it seems so relevant to the point I write about here, how quickly we evanesce once we're gone, for some of us, even before we are gone.

I have more than once reflected in these pages on what will happen to my paintings, drawings, 'Life in the Time of Covid' sketchbooks, my memoir, and my journals when I die.  I know the answer, of course: they will sooner or later end up in a landfill or incinerator, just as I will end up in the 'green' portion of Forest Home Cemetery.  My stuff, like myself, will go the way of all flesh and other stuff.  

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.  What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. . .There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.  

I think that I spend much of my days trying to outlast myself, trying to hold off my evanescence, my complete and utter annihilation, my disappearance, not only from the face of the earth, but from all memory.  Why did I go through all the trouble of writing a memoir chock-full of information that only I am interested in?  Wuzupwidat? Why have I spent (I used the word advisedly) nearly every day for the last three years bothering to compose thoughts (or even to copy and paste someone else's thoughts) in the pages of this journal?  Why have I held onto most of my drawings and paintings, covering the walls of our basement, our TV room, and my bedroom with them?  Why do I treat my "Live in the Time of Covid" sketchbooks as treasures?  Wuzupwidalldat?  I must be like the philanderin Cosmo Castorini in Moonstruck, whose wife Rose asked her daughter Loretta's fiancé, Johnny Cammareri, why men cheat, and was told, "Perhaps because they are afraid of dying."  The wise Rose (Olympia Dukakis) was onto Cosmo and wiser than him.  Catching him sneaking in late at night, she told him, “I just want you to know that no matter what you do, you’re still gonna die! Just like everyone else!” He knows she sees throught him and understands him and replied, “Thank you, Rose.”¹

There have been times when I have indulged the thought (or fantasy) that, when I write loving, praising words of my mother or my sister, that by putting them on my blog, into the cybersphere, I am transmitting them into Space, the Universe, communicating them to whatever intelligence may be receiving signals out in the Cosmos, keeping the memory of them, the fact of their existence, alive somehow.  Even if there is no receiving intelligence on some other planet, the information is on the internet, on a public site, probably searchable and thus in some sense permanent, or at least more permanent than our ephemeral lives and the ephemeral memories of those whose memories die with them.  Goofy thoughts, I suppose, eccentric.  Call me Cosmo Castorini.

Back to Alissa Quart and her artistic mother.  I am touched by her efforts to keep her mother's artwork from a landfill or incinerator, or tucked in the corner of an attic or basement for a while.  Nonetheless, I accept that eventually those paintings that meant so much to her mother, and perhaps to her, will end up like mine, trashed.  If I were a better Buddhist or Christian, I suppose I wouldn't feel so sad about that.  As it is, I do feel some sadness about our mortality and about the vanity of our works, and perhaps even more sadness that I don't even know Alissa Quart's mother's name.

¹ Oddly, while in the throne room on a break from writing the above, I read a short piece by Christopher Urban in this month's Harper's Magazine titled "At the Window," with this paragraph:

"What's your greatest fear?" said the woman from the garden in a whisper.  Her voice was soft in my ear.  We were both standing outside now, although where exactly, I couldn't say. . . . . I thought about my answer for a moment, too long it turned out, for she replied on my behalf with that characteristic impatience of hers.  "Oh, come on.  It's the same for everyone," she said, trying to give me a hint.  I was still racking my brain for a reply when she uttered, "Death!" 

 

A favorite pencil drawing of Nikki Onorato, from a photo I took a few years ago.

May it live on in cyberspace!😊

First page of hundreds in my watercolor sketchbook chronicle Life in the Time of Corona (what we called the corona virus before it was officially called Covid-19 for corona virus disease 2019.)  It kept me occupied from the outbreak around March 2020 until Trmp was defeated in November 2024.  I wish the whole chronicle were available online.  If only . . .

7/21/2025

Monday, July 21, 2025

D+255/183/1278

1925 John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in the “Scopes monkey trial”

1930 US Veterans Administration was formed

1940 Soviet Union annexed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

1954 Geneva Accords for Indochina divided the French colonial territories into the countries of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos

2024 Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris

 In bed before 10, up at 6.  

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 3 p.m.

A day at the VA.  I had 7 appointments at the VA today, between 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.  5 of the appointments were pre-op tests, etc., for the surgery on August 5.  I'm writing this at 3:10, not having had anything to eat all day and feeling a bit pooped.  I'm not up to writing much, but I note the significant anniversaries today.

I am so thankful for the VA and its medical program for military veterans.  I'm especially thankful for Zablocki Medical Center.  I felt it again today during my few hours there.  There is something in the air there that one does not find in other hospitals.  You feel it from the staff and from the veterans themselves.  I'm not imagining it.  I say I love the place, and that's pretty true, not a feeling I've ever had for any other hospital, clinic, or medical facility.  

I was about one month shy of my 13th birthday when the Geneva Accords carved up what had been French Indochina.  I was about a month shy of my 24th birthday when my government sent me there on a fool's mission.  We should have learned from the French.

Joe Biden finally dropped out of his campaign for re-election on this date last year.  I know it's simplistic and reductionist and binary thinking, but I blame him for the re-election of Donald Trump and the consequent incalculable harm and suffering in America and the world.

Born again?  I had that 'seeing with new eyes' experience again, both at the VA and while waiting for Geri outside Sendik's.  I can't describe it in words; I think of it internally as my Ivan Ilyich experience.   People and things which are as ordinary as ordinary can be appear to be more alive, more unique, more interesting or even fascinating than they did in the prior 82 or 83 years of my life.  I wish I could talk with everyone I encounter, in the hospital waiting room and elevators, or in Sendik's parking lot, wherever.  I would like to ask each one to tell me about their mother and their father, what their experiences were in school, how they got into the line of work they are in, what they think and feel about God and religions, and so on.  Were they ever in the military? Why or why not?  What did they think of Vietnam and Iraq?  What do they think, if anything, about Afghanistan and Gaza?  Are they afraid of anything?  Do you have any favorite movies or novels? Who was your favorite teacher?  Why?  Favorite aunt or uncle?  Why?  Favorite president?  Least favorite president?  Why?  Best job?  Worst job?   Everyone has a history, a very personal story, and I find myself interested in all those stories, although the kinds of questions to which I'd like the answer and the kinds of questions we rarely ask one another.  Who says, "Tell me about your mom," or "Tell me what, if anything, scares you?  We know next to nothing of one another and I guess we like it that way, but now, at the tail end of life, I'm interested in the answers to such questions, especially the early life and value questions.  Old age goofiness?  Why do I think of that amazing image of the infant at the end of 2001?

7/20/2025

Sunday, July 20, 2025

D+254/182/1279

1961 "Stop The World - I Want To Get Off" premiered

1969 Apollo 11 lunar module carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the surface of the Moon.

1988 Michael Dukakis was selected as the Democratic nominee

In bed around 11, up at 7:45. body all achin' & a-wracked with pain. 66°, high of 72°, cloudy.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 10:30 a.m.  

Dinner with the Lowes at the Goldbergs last night.  As usual, the gathering was warm and wonderful.  Caren prepared a delicious dinner of salmon and mixed roasted vegetables, and an assortment of fresh fruit, preceded by much antipasti, mostly fresh veggies.  I had my first glass of wine since Andy took me to the VA Emergency Room on November 25, 2023, for what turned out to be an interstitial cystitis flare.'  The wine was the 2018 Federalist Zinfandel, aged in bourbon barrels, that we brought to the dinner.  I arrived at the gathering a bit late after dropping off Geri, as I had forgotten my hearing aids and had to return home to retrieve them.  As it turned out, I had to turn their volume down because David's voice sounded so loud to me.  We learned that Julian Lowe is living in Los Angeles, and Adam Lowe is practicing law at Michael Best.  Sam Goldberg and his wife are expecting twins, their ## 2 and #3, to add to Rachel's boy and girl for a total of 5 Goldberg grandchildren.  David's life outside Tucson is very active: golf 4 days a week and pickleball the other three.  Caren and Dan also stay active with pickleball, and Dan also with cycling.  The conversation before and during dinner was mostly sharing news and stories about our children and their children.  We were all together until about 10 p.m., a bit later than our normal 9-ish, when David and I used to run out of steam.  I'm in worse condition this year than I was last year, and was in worse condition last year than I had been the year before.  Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.  I imagine the others had the same thought after our get-together that I had, i.e., this may be the last such gathering that I will attend.  I thought last night as I readied for bed, and think again this morning, that I don't want to be around for another gathering next year.  I would perhaps be in a wheelchair, or perhaps bedridden, homebound, or worse.  It's time to be on my way.

Text to Caren, Dan, David, and Pip: 

Here’s the quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., that  I couldn’t remember at the dinner table last night,  The last part of it, about not believing in ghosts, but fearing them, explains why so many Catholics (and evangelicals) have a very hard time walking away from their ‘tattoos,’ like ‘mortal sin’ and ‘eternal damnation.’🔥  As we know, many never do walk away from them and instead become Republicans.😖 We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,—"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".

Text to Caren:

Thank you for hosting a wonderful gathering of our clan last night.   The dinner was wonderful and the conversation and presence-sharing even more wonderful.  You and Dan could not be more gracious hosts.   It was especially nice to get together on your birthday, celebrating the day the world became a better place.❤️ 

Caren Goldberg:

Thank you, Chuck. No better way to celebrate 67 than with such good long time friends — what it’s all about. I really loved all the conversation about everyone’s memories from growing up — it was wonderful.

Charles Clausen:

I did too though those memories for me have some pain attached to them because of my dad’s PTSD after WW II and my mom’s after being raped when I was 6.  I wrote a memoir several years ago, most of it devoted to growing up in those circumstances and addressing the impact of the Church.  You’re welcome to look at it if you’d like.  One of the reasons I had such warm feelings for Bert Powell was our shared background as memoirists and self-confessors.  In any case, serious reflection on our childhood experiences is what reveals the accuracy of that “tattooed in our cradles “ quote by OWH, Sr.

Caren Goldberg:

You and your parents experienced so much pain as a result. I would love to see the memoir you wrote. We are all tattooed in our cradles and it’s a universal phenomenon.

Charles Clausen:

If you’re free for breakfast, brunch, or lunch, I could give you a copy and share a little background on it.  If you’re tied up with your travel and other commitments I could drop it off or you can pick it up here.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t feel a commitment to dive into the whole thing.  It starts with some ancestry stuff and ends with coming back to the States after Vietnam and going to law school, i.e., post “tattoo” stuff.

Caren Goldberg:

I’d love to go to breakfast, brunch or lunch! I could go to breakfast on Wednesday at 9:00 or I could go to brunch on the 29th at 11:00. Either of those work for you?

Charles Clausen:

About the only things that appear on my calendar anymore are medical appointments at the VA and birthday reminders.  Tomorrow, I have 7 appointments at the VA, mostly pre-op stuff in connection with the scheduled surgery on my privates😱, but otherwise my week is open, so how about breakfast on Wednesday.  Maxfields or some other place?

Caren Goldberg:

Maxfields on Wednesday sounds great. Does 9:00 work?

Charles Clausen:

Perfect. 

One year ago today:

I'm coming up on the 2nd anniversary of starting this daily journal and I wonder whether I should continue it after I hit that anniversary at the end of the month.  I probably will if for no other reason than what would I do to fill the time every night when I am awake and alone and needing something to fill the long hours until daybreak and Geri's rising?  But it is getting harder to write original thoughts rather than doing a "copy and paste" job from whatever I read in the newspapers or magazines, or from my memoir or an earlier journal entry.  I'm slowing down mentally as well as physically, running out of mental as well as physical energy, and getting less interested in the affairs of the world other than those that distress and depress me.  On the other hand, I have a hunch that writing every day, both the mental and intellectual part of it and the physical activity of typing and formatting, etc., may play a role in slowing cognitive decline and in helping me to recognize it as it occurs.  In any case, it's mostly the chronic pain that has me down.  I've been living with it on and off for a good 15 years, at least since 2009 when I suffered from the Hunner's ulcers in my bladder that recurred last year and required surgery this year.  Then the PMR, now the hip.  I've had two lengthy periods when I desired death every day, 'suicidal ideation' and all that.  I'm not there now, but it gets an old guy down.

Mah nishtanah.  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

7/19/2025

Saturday, July 19, 2025

D+253/181/1280

q2w

In bed at 10 after watching another LO'D rant re Trump/Epstein/WSJ, up at 5:20.  66°, high of 80°, rain this afternoon.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 8:15 a.m.

I woke up thinking that Mar-a-Lago must be a moral cesspool, and wondered whether it might be true of all of Palm Beach.  And of  much of official Washington and Wall Street.  And of much of our world.  It's Epstein and Trump and their multitudinous hangers-on that bring on these thoughts of what a foul, foul world we live in.  Homo hominis lupus.  I'm mindful, though, of 'judge not, lest ye be judged' and of the motes in others' eyes and the log in my own, in Matthew, but that advice makes one feel worse, doesn't it?  Niebuhr, the relevance of an impossible Christian ethic.  The first story I encountered on JSOnline this morning is about the arrest of a 46-year-old liver and kidney transplant surgeon at Froederdt Hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin for possession and distribution of child pornography.  He had messaged an undercover agent who was posing as a young mother of an 8-year-old daughter on a chatroom for individuals interested in "taboo" sexual relationships.  He inquired about beginning a sexual relationship with both the apparent mother and the daughter.  The surgeon's name is Calvin Eriksen.  John Calvin must be displeased in Heaven over the behavior of this namesake.  Or is he?  His teaching had it that Calvin Eriksen was predestined to be a bad guy, but God created him anyway.  It's one of those conundrums about God that I have trouble with.  "There could be no election [of those predestined for Heaven] without its opposite reprobation ... whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children."  I seem to be among the reprobated.  I wonder how Marilynne Robinson (Gilead)  can have such benign thoughts about Calvin and his theology.  Go figure.

When I went to this morning's New York Times, the lead story is about the Jesus freak who carried out the assassinations of state legislators in Minnesota, a complete whacko whose life was totally dominated by religous thoughts and impluses.  Instead of Flip Wilson's Geraldine 'the devil made me do it,' with this guy and milllions of others, its' 'Jesus made me do it.'  God help us, but we know he won't.

Mass deportation and eldercare.  Trump promised (falsely) to ease off on mass deportation of agricultural workers and workers in the hospitality industries because those industries rely so heavily on immigrant labor.  The other industry I have worried about from the beginning of this deportation madness is the long-term care industry servicing the nation's huge and growing elderly population.  From today's NYTimes:

Immigrants make up about 28 percent of the work force directly providing that care, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data from KFF, a health policy research group. In comparison, foreign-born workers account for about 19 percent of the entire U.S. civilian labor force.  Immigrants also play an outsize role in the home care industry, making up about 32 percent of that work force, according to KFF.

The biggest impact so far has stemmed from the Trump administration’s decision to end various programs that grant migrants temporary legal status, which authorizes them to live and work in the United States. In late May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration, for now, to end a humanitarian program that gave temporary residency to more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The administration has also tried to end a program for Haitians who have been living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, which is intended to help migrants who cannot return to their countries because of unsafe conditions. 

Ms. Smith Sloan said the impacts across the long-term care industry could become more pronounced as the administration ramps up efforts to restrict migrants from entering the United States. If there are fewer immigrants to fill positions, that could lead to nursing homes and assisted living facilities shutting down wings or closing their doors entirely, she said. Cuts to Medicaid, which were included in the domestic policy bill that Republicans recently passed, could further strain providers, she added.

White House officials said Mr. Trump would ensure that sectors “have the work force they need to be successful.”

“There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President Trump’s agenda to create jobs for American workers represents this administration’s commitment to capitalizing on that untapped potential while delivering on our mandate to enforce our immigration laws,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.

The administration’s attempt to clamp down on immigration comes at a time when the industry faces another challenge: the growing number of seniors. The U.S. population age 65 and older has been increasing at a rapid clip, meaning the long-term care industry will need more workers in the coming years to keep up.

“Barring some major change in fertility rates, we’re going to need immigrants to continue to supply the work force that the country needs for aging care,” said Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute.

Lower staffing levels at nursing homes, assisted living facilities and home care agencies could have substantial effects on the health of seniors, potentially leading to lower quality of care and life, said David Grabowski, a health care policy professor at Harvard Medical School. 

We know what "lower quality of care and life" means in a nursing home, and it's terrifying, nightmare material, Hell. 

 

7/18/2025

 Friday, July 18, 2025

D+252/180/1281

1870 Pius IX and the First Vatican Council proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility

2024 I renewed my driver's license until 2032😱

In bed 10 after watching LO'D excoriate DJT over WSJ 'fake news' about DJT's ltr to JEpstein on his 50th birthday, up at 5:30, after a long, involved  dream set in St. Francis church with me, a new Black Vietnam vet in a wheelchair, and his young nephew.  It was like a long short story playing out in my head.    59°, high of 72°, mostly sunny, near perfect day?

TRULICITY DAY!  Injection at 7:45 a.m.  Morning meds at 8 a.m.

My FB post this morning: Today is the anniversary of the dogma of papal infallibility, proclaimed by the First Vatican Council in 1870.  I grew up with the dogma and with photographs of the dour Pope Pius XII on the walls of seemingly every Catholic classroom, rectory, convent, and diocesan office.  I'll relate a humorous story about it (to me, at least) in a moment, but first I note that perhaps what has been most persistent about this dogma have been the words in opposition to it penned by the British Lord Acton, one of the rare Catholic peers in the UK, in a letter to Archbishop Mandell Creighton:

       "I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility [that is, the later judgment of historians] has to make up for the want of legal responsibility [that is, legal consequences during the rulers' lifetimes]. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. "    

My humorous (to me) story:  My friend Katie McManus, another born-and-raised Irish Catholic, told me this tale.  She was at a party with other Catholics, and somehow the dogma of the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven came up.  One of the friends said it was unbelievable.  Another pointed out that it was a dogma and belief was required of Church members, to which the sceptic replied: "Well, I may have to believe it, but I don't have to think about it."

Today I remember Katie and her sceptical friend but mostly I remember Lord Acton's "Great men are almost always bad men . . . .."  Was he too cynical, or a realist?

Le mot juste.  My eye was caught by this expression in a WaPo op-ed by Leo Hochstader, Will Pope Leo finally break the church’s cycle of denial? - A French priest, idolized for serving the poor, also victimized children. Pope Leo should take note:

". . . the depthless disgrace of priestly sexual abuse, the scandal from which the Catholic church has failed to extricate itself a quarter century after it erupted."

"Depthless disgrace."  Depthless denoting no bottom, connoting no end.  Le mot juste.  My comment in the WaPO:

PBosleySlogthrop

Today is the anniversary of the promulgation of the Church's dogma on papal infallibility by the First Vatican  Council in 1870.  It was vigorously opposed by the British Lord Acton, one of a handful of Catholic British peers.  It was he who wrote in a letter to an archbishop: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. "   

For many of 'the Faithful,' especially children, Catholic priests are men with authority, indeed absolute authority.  The are men with the power to miraculously convert bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus.  Indeed, they are surrogates of Jesus Himself at the Last Supper in the Consecration during the sacrifice of the Mass.  The Church can't stop trying to sanctify its human clergy.  As Pope Pius X wrote in his 1906 encyclical Vehementer Nos:

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

The most docile in flocks are the lambs, the children.  Until the Church abandons its theology and ecclesiology of the the priesthood, children and others will continue to be sexually abused by Catholic priests. 

I ran out of permitted space in the WaPo comments section or I would have added the following:  "The Church's existential problem is that it can't recast its sacerdotal doctrines without destroying itself.  Despite the Vatican II romanticism about "the Church" being "the people of God," in real life what separates "the Church" from all other forms of Christianity and indeed from all other religions is the priesthood and the hierarchy.  Take away the special divinely-appointed status of the priests, bishops, and popes and what is left of "the Chruch" with a capital C?  The popes and bishops all know this; they are the Church and they need to keep it that way or go out of business.  The role of the folks in the pews is simply to pray, pay, and obey.

CBS is killing Colbert's's Late Night show, claiming it is strictly a financial decision.  My hunch: it's a political decision connected with the merger needing FTC approval.  The new ownership entity wants to get out of the business of offending Trump and Trumpkins with late-night humor.  Coincidence?  The announcement comes 3 days after Colbert blasted CBS for paying a bribe to Trump in settling Trump's frivolous and malicious 60 Minutes suit.

Party Girl.  We watched this 1995 flick on MUBI last night.  Parker Posey last night.  It was set in the downtown NYC club scene in the 1990s and featured a lot of behavior that was far removed from my St. Leo parish norms, but I enjoyed it.  Mostly, I enjoyed watching Parker Posey's vim, vigor, and vitality (did I leave out vivacity?) playing the lead role.  Quite a performance.  She played a 23-year-old East Village party girl morphing into a librarian.  

Birthday exchange with CBG: Hi, Sweetie.  I believe it is the eve of your 67th birthday, and I once again write you in the selfish effort to be the first to wish you a Happy Birthday.  Each year as your birthday rolls around, I recall our first meeting in Bob’s office so many years ago when we were so much younger and our lives so very  different, and at a time when Bob, TSJ, WBG. WSR. and DSB were still with us.  And I inevitably remember the many lunches that we made a point of sharing at Goldman’s, etc., after we no longer shared the common workplace.  Those memories warm my old heart and fill it with gratitude for your friendship.  With so many of my family members and friends no longer in my life, I am especially thankful that you are.  A lot of life has passed between the meeting in Bob’s office and today, and a smidgen more will pass before dinner tomorrow.  I thank you for sharing all you have with me (and Geri) and  Happy Birthday.❤️

Thank you, Chuck. I love your message. It is hard to believe so much time has passed and I’m grateful to have shared these many years with you. And don’t forget our lunches at Hooligans, too! The memories warm my almost 67 year old heart also and the laughs were off the charts. He

"Wallowing in a bog of introspection": Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I got to thinking today that this title of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic that I read (was surprised by, and thoroughly enjoyed) decades ago is pretty descriptive of me.  It describes two very different characters or personas in one body, Dr. Jekyll, the civil, well-met, well-adjusted guy, and Mr. Hyde, the contorted monster, a double or multiple personality.  I say multiple because I have a third character or persona: the guy writing this blog/journal.  These thoughts arise not only because of my mood swings, 'normal' one day, much more than 'subdued' the next, but because of my practice of keeping negative, moody, anxious, unhappy, complaining thoughts to myself, unexpressed, though deeply felt.  I'm often really miserable: feeling sorry for myself, living with pain (not severe, but distracting, limiting, and very unwelcome), living with discomfort, living with inabilities and diminished capacities, living with despair about the future, both personally(increasing decrepitude) and for the nation (dystopia), living with some real loneliness, living in the past with real regrets and in the inevitably-fearful future.  Like probably most males and more probably like most old Marines, I have little tolerance for whining, or even complaining (except about Trump.)  There are days in which I suppose that the " grin-and-bear-it approach is a good thing.  Who wants to have to listen to a constant complainer?  I remember PKR.  On the other hand, there are so many days when I really wish I could just die and 'get it over with,' 'be done with it,' days that I spend wishing I could lie down and never get up, but no one around me would know it.  On some of those days, I've been bothered by pain, discomfort, and decrepitude for days and can't see much point in 'living' like that.  On other days, I've been beset by regrets, thoughts of failure, pointlessness.  In any case, on those fairly frequent days, I take exception to the title of Bishop Fulton Sheen's old show, Life is Worth Living.  Sometimes I feel like the man in John Prine's song Hello, In There, sometimes like Richard Cory, in Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem.  CDC I is what people see day-to-day.  CDC II is what's going on inside me.  CDC III is what people read in this journal/blog or on Facebook, with rarely a reference to CDC II in the journal and never on Facebook.  Different people.   Not a healthy situation, but I can't see how to fix it.  CDC I and CDC II need to be better integrated.  It's something to work on.  I wonder just how neurotic, disordered, or unusual CDC II is for an old guy in my condition.  Am I just a hopeless wimp about old age, needing to SNAP OUT OF IT?  I know how I feel and it's not good, a bit schizzy actually with CDC II's frequent inner life of misery only hinted at by the quiet, uncommunicative CDC I and not at all by CDC III.

 

7/17/2025

 Thursday, July 17, 2025

D+251/179/1282

1917 Royal Proclamation by King George V changed the name of British Royal family from German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor

1959 Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey discovered the partial skull of a new species of early human ancestor now called Paranthropus boisei, which lived in Africa almost 2 million years ago

1962 The Senate rejected medicare for aged Americans

In bed at 9:15, up at 5:20.  Both shoulders and hands very sore/painful.  I'm thinking this is PMR but who knows.  If it is, and I have this much pain after 2 Kevzara injections within 8 days, I think I'm in trouble and may be back on prednisone, but again, who knows.  I didn't even try to put on a bathrobe this morning, too much shoulder pain.  Everything is complicated by this g-d surgery coming up which I'm comng to believe is probably necessary because of the pain/discomfort I'm experiencing urinating. F.  I've been miserable and blue for some time now, fearing continued life of pain and discomfort, incapacity, immobility, dependency, and loneliness.  It's been more than a month since Dr. Chatt referred me to the clinic psych on 6/12 for "subdued mood" and she sent me the OD medication even though I told her I didn't want it.  I thought of my Aunt Mary waiting to die and praying "What's the problem, God?  I'm ready."  I almost teared up yesterday listening to Jane Oliver singing  (wailing?) 'You Wanna Be Loved' on a  playlist, while I drove home from the library.  Unexpected and uninvited emotional respone.  I'll probably feel better today; it's actually hard work to be blue for a long time, takes a lot out of you.  I hear Kitty and Loretta Castorini: SNAP OUT OF IT! 

Kevzara; Trulicity.  No Kevzara, no Trulicity.  Morning meds at 8 a.m.

I stumbled upon Kiss Me Again, Stranger by Daphne du Maurier and had to refresh my memory about its plot.  I read it a few years ago and of course forgot entirely what it was about, which was, in brief, a female serial killer.  Her home had been destroyed and her parents killed during the Battle of Britain.  On an impromptu date with the narrtor of the story, she asked him "You weren't ever in the Air Force, were you?" and said "Good," when he replied "No."  He asked what she had against the RAF and she replied "They smashed my home."  He said "That was the Germans, not our fellows" and she replied "It's all the same, they're killers, aren't they?"  The denouement of the story is that she killed English men who were or had been in the Royal Air Force and that she encountered andl killed another one after she sent the narrator on his way the night before.  It made me think of Eighth Air Force by Randall Jarrell.

If, in an odd angle of the hutment,
A puppy laps the water from a can
Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving
Whistles O Paradiso!--shall I say that man
Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?

The other murderers troop in yawning;
Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one
Lies counting missions, lies there sweating
Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.
O murderers! . . . Still, this is how it's done:

This is a war . . . But since these play, before they die,
Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,
I did as these have done, but did not die--
I will content the people as I can
And give up these to them: Behold the man!

I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,
Many things; for this last saviour, man,
I have lied as I lie now.  But what is lying?
Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.

and of An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by William Butler Years.

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

It makes me think too of Danang and the TACC and the thousands of bombing missions we kept track of over my 8 months there.  "It's all the same, they're killers, aren't they?"  

And I can't think of Randall Jarrell without recalling The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.