Having to be a parent to my dad

 This past week, my dad had to spend a couple days in the hospital.    His cardiologist had put him on a new blood pressure medication, which exacerbated fluid retention that clearly was already occurring.   He went to the cardiologist because for the first time in his life, he was having trouble with blood pressure.

For the first time in my life, today, I went with my dad to one of his doctor’s appointments.  He was following up with the cardiologist after his hospitalization.

The doctor let him know that he now has congestive heart failure, And that he needed to be on higher doses of diuretics, to counteract the effect of the congestive heart failure.

The challenge was the doctor asked him to avoid hiking alone while we were working on titrating the amount of diuretics he needed.   But Dad has a very strong need to hike alone, so this was not received particularly well.

I decided to try for a compromise, and asked dad to stick to hiking in places where there was clear cell phone coverage.   It took some vigorous advocacy on my part to get him to agree to this.

It was the first time in my life where I have felt like the parent with respect to my dad.   This is an odd new feeling, and I needed to record the day it happened.

Of Whom the World was not Worthy . . .

The purpose of this post is very simple. 

I am recording my grief and confusion that the paradigm shift I wrote about before is taking longer and having more turns in it than I originally anticipated. 

The catalyst for this particular post is the 2024 presidential election. The candidate I favored lost, and the one one that I found incomprehensibly repulsive won. 

I was feeling as if it would be close, but the outcome was a little more in the reprobate's favor than I was expecting. 

It feels like that trope in horror movies where the putatively defeated monster/villain suddenly roars back to power and life. In the real world, there is no guarantee that the second half of that trope - i.e. the final defeat of the villain is completed - will ever actually occur. 

One advantage of loving and reading history is that we are able to judge the final results of trends, and see if we can trace the influences and factors that led to those results - AND most importantly this means we are reading those factors with the benefit of hindsight. In the real world, we don't have that luxury. Instead, we have to apply our beliefs and values as we see fit, and (in my view) in harmony with Providence. Yet we do not have any guarantee it will end well for us. 

In Hebrews 11, the "good endings" are first described. 

Then the author goes on to describe those who suffered rather than gaining great things: "Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurection. Other suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented - of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground." (Hebrews 11:35-38, NRSV) On Good Friday, the disciples themselves had no certainty that Easter Sunday was coming. That triumph was all seen only in retrospect, once the events had finished unfolding.

Right now, I feel like one of those from Hebrews who suffered, or like a follower of Jesus on Holy Saturday. I don't know what's coming next. I want to be like Dietrich Bonhoeffer - handwriting his "Von guten Maechten" poem in the darkness of a prison cell, just days before he was shot and his time on Earth was ended. . . . Yet I also fear I will not be able to follow his example. I want to hold on to that sense of Good Providence - Good Providence that will be with me, whatever happens on this grieving and complicated world. So . . . all I can do right now is find myself holding onto the Jesus Prayer, when all else fails. Breathing slowly. Repeating over and over: "Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Jung and memories in the unconscious mind.

Recording a particularly weird dream I had last night. It seemed to have deep Jungian overtones - related to saving a young boy from from a man trying to harm his innocence. The one trying to harm the child ended up deceased under water in a deep well. . . . Wondering what brought that very distinct Jungian dream.

2023 - The View from Mid-Paradigm Shift

Right now, we are in the middle of a professional and societal paradigm shift accelerated by the Covid Pandemic of the past few years. The issue comes down in many ways. First example. We are currently (July 2023) in the middle of a widespread strike by writers and actors in the entertainment industry. The issue boils down to how to characterize re-broadcast of the shows written by these writers and acted by these thespians (use of fancy word to avoid too much repetition). ... At the time the last a contract was negotiated, streaming services were in their infancy, or at least toddler stage. They were characterized as "new media" and the actors and writers didn't demand (or recieve) regular levels of residual payments for re-broadcast through the new media. But times have changed. At this point, the producers (networks, media companies, studios, etc.) through the experience of the pandemic and the quickly-developing new modes of transmitting streaming services, realized that if they primarily used the modes cacagorized as "new media" for re-transmitting the productions, then they could stop paying residual payments to the actors. The formlerly lucrative (or at least decent) residuals dried up p and many work-a-day actors suddenly found their income plummetting. And this happened at the same time that the profits for the producers soared . . . in part, because the didn't have to cut residual checks. Hence the strike. In a way, this appears to be nothing more than an attempt by the actors and writers to re-establish what had been a stable system prior to the advent of streaming. Likewise, producers are fighting to keep the windfall (as I see it) that streaming has created by cutting their costs to the actors and writers. Second example. Throughout the 20th and early 21st century, the symbol of American prosperity and wealth has become the Central Business District (CBD) in each major American city. This was where office workers gathered, and it also drew properieters of the services (restaurants, stores, entertainment) used by these same white-collar office workers. The same communication revolation that is playing out among the actors and writers also caused a shift here. . . . It is becoming easier and easier for office workers to do their work from their homes in the subburbs - to which they had fled to avoid the chaos that the CBD crowding also contained - and the difficult commutes from the suburbs to the CBD. Originally, the Covid Pandemic accelerated change because it wasn't safe to crowd together - and the office workers suddenly discovered how nice it was to avoid the chaotic commute! Just now, it is beginning to dawn on developers and commercial landlords that the needs to which they catered, and from which they made their profits, are changing. The CBD is rapidly evolving (and offices that were once humming are now very quiet). What to do? Particularly when the financing for building and the rent structure does not yet reflect the changes caused by better communication infrastructure and fewer white-collar "customers" needing less space. In both these cases, no one knows quite what will happen, and the amount of anxiety and speculation surrounding these changes is also at a height. This is another reason for our current level of anxiety. I am writing this (again) in part to crystalize for myself the moment we have reached as of July 2023. I look forward to seeing where all this speculation leads in the next couple years.

My feeling was right - it was actually a good midterm for Democrats.

These things are never certain. Nonetheless . . . I think a combination of Roe's overturning and all the truly startlingly bad candidates in certain swing states contributed to a mostly positive Democractic party result in the midterms. Of course . . . Since Cable News abhors a speculative vacuum, the speculation on who might run in 2024 started the day after the election was called - we can't have dead air, can we?.

This is just a quick note on my mood. It is a challenge. I am also noting that it feels as if we have to endure all of October waiting for the Midterm Election. My feelings remain settled that I don't know what will happen. But I hope. It also feels as if the media is filling the void of knowlege with endless speculation on doom scenarios (particularly for Democracts). I think they are understimating the change caused by the Supreme Court's overruling of the Roe v. Wade precedent. . . . I still think it has energized a whole group who hasn't been active previously. And that continues to make the conventional wisdom inapplicable. But nature (and the media) abhors a vacuum, so it is as bad as I have evern seen it speculation wise. And anxiety-wise. Will read this once we know what happened and see what is still valid, and what has ages poorly.

Following up on my post from June 15, 2021

In many ways, it seems as if we are stuck in a circle of Democratic anxiety and Media predictions of doom in November for the Democratic Party. This comes from the conventional wisdom that the party in the White House (and in power) generally suffers at its mid-term election. Usually true, but I am not sure this year will follow conventional wisdom. Events keep happening that do not (as I see it) seem to be harbingers of doom for Democrats. (1) We recently had the leak of a draft US Supreme Court opinion, which overtuned Roe v. Wade and deeply questioned whether the US Constitution truly has a an embedded right to privacy. The reaction to the leak was fury on the part of much of the populaiton (at least middle of the road to liberal) due to the reactionary attempt to drag the Constitution back to its pre-1973 state of interpretation. So far, the conservative attempt to turn it into a scandal that the draft was leaked has not gained general traction. (2) There was an epic tragedy in Texas - on May 24, 2022, an 18-year old shot and killed 19 students and two teachers in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. He had over an hour to trap these students and teachers in their classroom and methodically shoot them - since the polic dithered outside doing nothing (except handcuffing, tazing, and pepper-spraying parents) for over an hour. The polic response was so shockingly inept that the usual suspects couldn't get traction on their normal pro-gun talking points after the massacre. (3) There is both high inflation and low unemployment right now - both of which seem to be a combination of both Covid after-effects and Baby Boomers finally deciding it was time to quit the job market, perhaps due to both their age and to Covid fatigue. (4) The primaries are unfolding with (generally) united Democratic elections and Republican free-for-all battles royale. I asked Josh Marshall the quesiton whether a party that is engaged in an internal civil war has ever won back Congress in a mid-term when its opposition was united. No answer from him yet. (5) Talking to an attorney from the Colorado Secretary of State's office, he is worried about elections in small rural counties, since many county clerks have resigned over death threats in the small counties. What does this all mean? . . . I don't know. But I still am not not seeing any signs that this environment will automatically lead to a Democratic rout in November (which is the conventional wisdom's predicted outcome). I remain cautiously optomistic. . . . This is because both the Roe issue and the Gun issue are not likely to be forgotten by November (too monumental and horrifying), and because while inflation is high, jobs are plentiful, so not really a bad economy. I am writing this to remember how I feel at the end of May, 2022. Will check again once November is here, and the actual election is past.