Dispatches from the home front, along with a few hot takes on current events. With which I’ll start:
I’m reading an oral history of the development of the atom bomb and its use against Japan: The Devil Reached Toward the Sky, by Garrett M. Graff. He has a long section composed of quotes, memos, and letters from the notable phyiscists and scientists who had the foresight to leave Germany and other parts of Europe in the 1930s, sometimes just one step ahead of Nazi pursuers. Their contemporaneous observations on what was happening in German society, government, and the universities where they worked make for spine-chilling reading in this, the first year of Donald Trump’s second term in office.
Garrett M. Graff. I wonder if the M is for Morris, or some other M name with double letters.
Until the other day, I thought I deserved a pat on the back for never joining the words “president” and “Trump.” Not once, I would have claimed; neither in speech, nor on paper, nor online. But then I did a word search of my blog and discovered a post from October of 2018, back in Trump’s first term, when I accidentally put the P- and T-words together. I say accidentally, because I sure as hell didn’t mean to. I was tempted to edit the post, but that’s the sort of thing Trump would do, as he’s trying to do with the historical events of January 6, 2021. As he wants to do with his ICE agent’s murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month. As he wishes he could do (and is furiously trying to do) with the Epstein files.
The Washington Post won’t let me link to its story unless I subscribe, so you’ll have to trust me on this: they recently reported that applicants for positions at the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes are “being asked how they would support the president’s policy priorities, raising concerns about the prospects for the historic outlet’s editorial independence.” You gotta be shittin’ me. I’ve spent enough time overseas to have fully experienced S&S’s editorial independence — which simply does not exist. Maybe at some point in history it did, but not during my years reading S&S in the 1980s and 90s, when it was simply a mouthpiece for the commander-in-chief and the Department of Defense. At best, if the president, DoD, or some 4-star implemented a questionable policy or did something stupid, they’d bothsides it to death on the editorial page, never taking a stand one way or the other. One shameful incident, which I’ve recounted before: in the late 1980s, a few days after military police busted a ring of homosexual American soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen on Okinawa, the Pacific edition of Stars & Stripes published the names of every individual arrested, apparently at the direction of some headquarters general in South Korea … this while the wives of those men were still on the island, forced to continue shopping for necessities and food at base exchanges and commissaries, their kids still in DoD school classrooms — doxxed to anyone who read the Stars & Stripes, which was everyone in the Pacific theater. That’s the “independent” Stars & Stripes I know.
Could anything be more cringeworthy than Trump gleefully accepting Venezuelan opposition leader María Machado’s Nobel Prize medal? I wonder if, behind the scenes, he also asked her for the million dollars that came with it. I bet he did. We haven’t begun to explore the depths of embarrassment the toddler in the White House will expose us to. His letter to Norway’s prime minister, in which he railed against the decision not to award him the Nobel and made new threats to take over Greenland? Jesus H. Christ.
Okay, to the home front:
That’s my left ear, with a small bandaid, almost invisible, covering the spot where the dermatologist has just cut away a piece of skin to have biopsied, suspecting it to be a basal cell cancer. None of my dermatologists have ever been wrong about these things, so it’s almost a given I’ll be back to have more of it cut away. But for now, whew — this is the easiest I’ve ever gotten off after a biopsy. Normally I’ll come home with a thick 3″ by 3″ sterile pad taped over my cheek, nose, temple, or forehead, with strict instructions to leave it on for several days and to be careful not to get it wet in the shower.
So far all my skin cancers have been on my face; I must have had 20 by now and there are little (and not so little) scars everywhere. The trend continues; in addition to today’s biopsy, several spots around my eyebrows and temples, plus one on my right cheek, got the freezing nitrogen treatment. Blisters? Oh yeah, there’s that to look forward to, but they never last long.
Local hospitals have re-instituted mandatory masking, but no one was wearing one at the dermatology clinic this morning. I keep a pack of masks in my car and carried one to my appointment, but didn’t need to put it on. Which makes sense. People who go to the hospital are normally sick. Not so people who go to routine dermatology appointments.
I wonder how many of my dermatologist’s patients have had to cancel cancel appointments because they can no longer afford health insurance? As a senior citizen and retired military member with Medicare and Tricare for Life, I’ve so far escaped the steep rate increases affecting so many civilian workers and retirees.
At my age, I take afternoon naps. Surely I have dreams in the night, but they vanish upon awakening. Nap dreams are different — those I remember. In the most recent one, I was on the patio washing shit off a hat with a high-pressure hose. I got that feeling you get when something’s not right or someone is staring at you, and glanced over my shoulder at the wall enclosing the patio. The wall was head-high and there was a hairy hump showing on the other side, so I got up on my toes to see better and it was a huge moose, just on the other side of the wall. Two of them, in fact, and the closer one, a big bull with antlers, reared up on its hind legs and started to come over the wall to get me. I shouted “Oh no, go away!” Several times. according to Donna, with increasing volume and urgency. She should know, because she was napping next to me. I later recounted the dream on Threads, where a kindly AI sexbot weighed in:
The meaning i have for your dream: It seems like you’re trying to clean up something that feels embarrassing or damaging to your sense of self, while sensing a much larger issue looming nearby. It seems like you’re aware it could intrude, and the possibility triggers anxiety strong enough that you instinctively reach for help. I don’t know if it helps.
Well, not really, but thanks anyway. Speaking of AI, artificial intelligence, isn’t AS, artificial stupidity, a far greater and more prevalent danger? I see AS everywhere I look these days, but can’t claim credit for coining the label: that comes, as far as I can determine, from Calvin Tomkins, an emeritus writer for The New Yorker.
I’m thinking of jumping on the AS bandwagon with a TikTok video or two, short show & tells about some of the wristwatches in my collection. Why not? Everyone else is doing it! More on that anon.
Stay fresh, cheese bags!