Monday later than intended

 

Fog, another foggy morning out, why? As Ross Whitley teaches, it's because the temperature is 62 and the dew point is 62. Humidity 99% and Wind SE 2 mph. Out the Beck window I can see downtown StAndrews but on the Bay side cannot even see the wrecked shrimp boat that's right out there in my front yard. Fog will clear up by when? IDK, no matter to me, so far as I know we have no plans for today. 

Oh, the Volvo, Kristen's car for ten years, now my car since Joe adopted the seventeen year old Cadillac, has a burned out headlight again, the left side low beam lightbulb, what's causing that? Maybe I'll drop it by BayTown. But that would involve changing out of my house clothes, exercise outfits that double as pajamas. Anon, anon.

Life in 7H is somewhat casual, though only one of us is a slob.

Current book, "The Fire" by German historian Jörg Friedrich. So far, it's as thoroughly researched and meticulously detailed as Halprin's "A Soldier of the Great War" and Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" - two books, history novels, that to me are benchmarks for excellence.

Other than further satisfying a lifelong fascination, what do I expect of this Lent 2023 reading discipline? Well, maybe, to grow my understanding and empathy with an enemy toward whom my antipathy has never abated in the slightest even though most Germans who lived in sympathy with the Third Reich are dead. I was thoroughly conditioned by our wartime propaganda that developed my childhood, and I well remember war newsreels, concluding with liberation of the concentration camps, and, vividly horrifying, cremation ovens containing charred skulls and skeletons. 

But vehement hatred is an incredibly heavy load to carry through life. I don't have it toward the Japanese, perhaps it's racist, that we didn't see them as like us, but Other. Germans are us, even now, I found out in old age, my own cousins. How to let it all go?! And then My Lai, and our carpet bombing during the Vietnam War, a leveling agent that reimages my hatred as the blindness of a fool and hypocrite. 

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Putin's strategy in Ukraine. There could be but won't be a stalemate and ceasefire or armistice; and the only way for Ukraine to win is offensive war across the border to destroy Russia's ability to wage war against Ukraine, a recipe for WW3, but which may already have begun in any event?

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Online there's a C-Span film of Jorg Friedrich addressing an audience about his book, but several years old, it wouldn't open and play for me. I did copy and paste the transcript of both his address and the Q&A session that followed. Most interesting.

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Breakfast, half a ham & pimiento cheese sandwich, leftover supper from last night.

Dinner, rest of Sunday Dinner steak, steamed cabbage, Southern corn bread (no sugar); dessert: bit of fig preserve on last bite of cornbread. Small glass Malbec, glass of Japanese barley tea, iced.

Supper, ?

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Life's trials: I have two good sets of hearing aids, one I bought, one from VA. The set from VA is recharged every night, is controlled through my phone, plays through my phone into the center of my brain, and can direct television sound the same way, direct into the center of my brain. The other set, not so fancy, has changeable batteries: sometimes when closing the little battery gate, a bit of the skin behind my ear gets pinched into the hearing aid. Would be bad word Time except that I'm in too big a hurry to open the little gate and let the skin free.

Hearing aids are like eyeglasses: no stigma to it, don't hesitate to mention them or ask about them. Supposedly, they help ward off debilitating features of aging, including dementia and including dizziness that causes falls.

Other. Pulmonary edema brought on by CHF and being careless with salt, causes ankles and feet to swell up, right side first. Eventually, requires a shoe spoon, shoe horn, to put on the right shoe but not yet the left shoe.

Eyeglasses, my cataracts are so minimal the eye doctor says no problem yet. As I've said here before, he has given me two eyeglasses prescriptions, one for reading and one for computer/pulpit/altar at arms-length. Don't need or wear eyeglasses for driving, and if I walk even one step while wearing either pair, I get dizzy; so glasses on cord around the neck to don and doff as needed. 

What else would you like to know about extreme old age? It's probably none of your business.

RSF&PTL

T