Description – Journal 2024: Donald Trump and My Upcoming Heart Surgery is the 21st yearly journal published by San Francisco author Joseph Sutton. Among the subjects Sutton covers in this 9,000-word journal are Trump, Biden, sports, racism, family, exercise, writing, his past, his regrets, and climate change.
Sunday, January 21, 2024 – Rain is always welcome to us Californians. It’s so nice to see it coming down—except for yesterday when the 49ers played the Green Bay Packers in a playoff game at Levi’s Stadium. Brock Purdy, quarterback of the Niners, looked so bad playing in the rain. I was fed up with him and had resigned myself to the Niners losing the game, although they were overwhelming favorites. Purdy couldn’t throw accurately. He was off so much of the time that I almost gave up on the Niners and called it a season. But somehow, miraculously, Mr. Purdy, on the 49ers last possession, led them on a touchdown drive where he completed six of seven passes, and they went ahead 24-21, leaving Green Bay a little over a minute to receive the kickoff and get into field goal range. But Green Bay’s quarterback, Jordan Love, threw a long pass that was intercepted by Dre Greenlaw that iced the game for the Niners. Purdy, thank goodness, came through in the end.
My son Ray and I watched the game at his house in Oakland. My grandson Joseph, almost four, was much improved from the last time I saw him. He wasn’t as destructive this time. He’s growing and learning. And then there was little Maxwell, almost two months old, who slept and drank his mother’s milk from a bottle during the game.
I’m working on yearly Journal 2014. I’ve finished 11 other yearly journals since I began this journal project four years ago. The project will keep me busy for the remainder of my life, since I have over 40 more journal years to cover.
Life has become very routine. Mondays and Thursdays, I go to the YMCA in the morning to exercise with my water aerobics class. The five other days, I work on a journal year and go for a walk in the late afternoon. I don’t have the energy I had a couple of years ago, although I’m in pretty good shape. I weigh 209 right now. I would like to lose weight, but somehow when dinnertime comes around, I eat a little too much and drink a little too much bourbon. “Nothing in excess” said the ancient Greeks. Well, I really don’t eat that much, it’s that I don’t move around as much as I used to. I’m 83 and will be 84 in August. I don’t like this potbelly I have. If I can get under 200 pounds, I’d lose it. I should always keep in mind these four simple words: Eat Less, Move More.
I’ve been reading Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason. His thoughts and mine about religion are identical. Paine believed in a God that created the universe and then left it to run on its own. That type of thinking is known as Deism, emphasizing reason over religious dogma. God does not hear our thoughts and prayers, God has left it up to us to think for ourselves. This is what Paine and other Deists like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and possibly George Washington and James Madison believed. They were so much ahead of their time. Paine also believed that there were billions of stars in our galaxy and that there were billions of galaxies. This was in the late 1700s and early 1800s, The Age of Enlightenment. Paine was totally against slavery. So, here’s to Thomas Paine, his thoughts, and the thoughts that both of us have in common.
Tuesday, January 30, 2024 – Two days ago, the San Francisco 49ers made a miraculous comeback against the Detroit Lions in the National Football League Division Series. They were 17 points behind at halftime. Everyone in the Bay Area and the nation thought they were going to be run over by the Lions, but then they came out of the locker room, received the second half kickoff, and scored a field goal, which made it 24-10. Being 14 points behind in the early part of the second half gave them hope. Detroit got the ball and the 49ers held. A Brock Purdy pass to Brandon Aiyuk for a gain of 51 yards got them down to Detroit’s three-yard line. It was a very heads-up play by Aiyuk, because the pass was deflected off the defensive back’s face-guard. The 49ers then scored on a short pass from Purdy to Aiyuk to make it 24-17. You could literally “feel” the momentum change.
As it turned out, the Niners won the game 34-31 to make it one of the greatest comebacks in Bay Area history. What a game! I watched it with my son Ray at his house in Oakland. I thought Aiyuk’s circus catch was the turning point of the game, but that can be debated. The first possession the 49ers had after halftime, when they scored a field goal, could have been the turning point. The fumble recovery by the 49ers in the third quarter could have been it. The two unsuccessful fourth down plays by Detroit could have been the turning point. All I can say is, MOMENTUM was palpable for the 49ers.
I thought of a writing project, which is to write a book called The Decades in My Life. For instance, the Decade of 1960-1969: After playing running back for L.A. Valley Junior College, I received a football scholarship to the University of Oregon, but played sparingly for two years; I graduated from Oregon with a B.A. in philosophy; I joined the Coast Guard reserve; I earned a teaching credential and a major in history at Cal State University Los Angeles; I subbed in the L.A. School system; I traveled through Europe; I subbed another year; I then got a teaching job at Fremont High School in South Central L.A.; I decided I wanted to be a writer; I moved to the Bay Area and started an autobiographical novel about my last semester of teaching at Fremont High.
Sunday, February 11, 2024 – It’s a sad day in the old town tonight. The 49ers lost the Super Bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs in overtime 25-22. That damn Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce of Kansas City, a duo that will someday make it into the NFL Hall of Fame, did the damage to the 49ers. The 49ers, in overtime, drove for a first down inside Kansas City’s 10-yard line but could only score a field goal. Kansas City got the ball, drove inside the 49ers 10-yard line, and scored a touchdown to win their third Super Bowl championship in four years.
Saturday, March 9, 2024 – I’ve been very busy working on my yearly journals. I started working on them four years ago at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. I’m about to put Journal 2014: The Life of an Unknown Writer on Amazon Kindle and my website. This journal was originally 175 pages long. I whittled it down to 63 pages. Every journal I work on I seem to get better at taking out the redundant and superfluous parts. It usually takes me about three-and-a-half to four months to edit a yearly journal. This one is my twelfth.
So, what’s going on in my life and the country’s life? Well, it’s another year to elect a president. President Joe Biden, in my opinion, is doing an excellent job. The infrastructure of the country is being worked on, meaning more people are working. Biden’s trying to get Congress to have the billionaires pay their fair share in taxes. He’s trying to hold back climate change by investing in renewable energy and climate solutions. He’s against the Supreme Court’s decision to do away with Roe v. Wade. For the past 50 years, women have been able to choose what to do with their bodies. The Supreme Court has now left the decision up to each state. Some states are very backward-thinking and are now preventing women from having an abortion, even if rape or incest is involved. What was going on in the minds of the five ultraconservative judges on the Court, which consists of Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett? They’re so conservative that their causing a great divide in this country. If a woman doesn’t want to have an abortion, so be it. But if she needs an abortion for her mental, physical, or economic well-being, she doesn’t have a choice in certain states.
Donald Trump is running for president again. He’s been charged with 91 counts of being a criminal, and still millions are going to vote for him. Where is the critical thinking of Trump’s followers? The man says he wants to be a dictator on the first day of his presidency. That should be evidence enough for people NOT to vote for him.
The Decades in My Life. Today I’ll list the Decade of 1940-1949. I was born in Brooklyn in 1940. Our family moved to Hollywood in 1941, two months before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. I had four older brothers. There was no pre-school in those days. My mother, Jean Sutton, had to take care of all of us from birth until we started kindergarten. My father, Raymond Sutton, had a small linen store on 7th and Hill streets in downtown Los Angeles. I started kindergarten in 1945 at Selma Avenue School. I joined the YMCA when I was in the third grade in 1948. The Y was where I learned how to swim and play sports. My brothers loved sports, and so I took after them. My family lived in a few places in the middle of Hollywood before we moved to 1632 North Fairfax Avenue (cross-street Hollywood Boulevard) in 1949. I transferred from Selma Avenue School to Gardner Street School. My brother Albert was born in 1949. It was at Gardner Street School that I discovered my true athletic ability.
Friday, March 22, 2024 – My grandson Joe had his fourth birthday party at an Oakland park this past weekend. It was a sunny but very cool day. I needed to stand in the sun most of the time to get some warmth.
Donald Trump has been in the news on an almost daily basis for the past nine years. There’s a judge, Aileen Cannon in Florida, who is trying to help him with her insane rulings. She should be thrown off the bench because it’s so obvious that she, a Trump appointee, favors Trump over the law. You see, Trump confiscated classified documents and stored them in a ballroom and bathroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Those papers belong in the National Archives, not in Trump’s possession.
Joan is having sleeping problems. She’s trying to cut down on cannabis gummies that help her sleep. She’s relied on cannabis for many years. She’s talked to several counselors and has been attending a Zoom group on the Internet to help with her sleeping problem. She even paid a marijuana doctor $99 for a one-hour phone session. She struggles. One day she’s on top of the world and the next day she’s depressed. She’s slowly reducing the cannabis, but it’s been hard on her.
I’ve been having trouble sleeping myself, for years. I have to get up maybe two or three times every night to go to the bathroom. Most of the time I get back to sleep. But there are times I lay awake for hours. My Fitbit watch is always telling me that my sleep is Fair. Very rarely does it say my sleep is Good.
To get back to Donald Trump, a most abhorrent creature, in that he creates hatred and division, not only here in the U.S. but around the world. He keeps saying the presidential election is rigged if he loses to Joe Biden—that is, if he doesn’t go to jail first. You just can’t win with that man. That’s what the Insurrection on January 6 was all about. He prodded his followers with, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” The crowd then marched to the Capitol Building, busted through police barricades, broke into the Capitol, and ransacked it. Trump, for almost three hours, watched it on television, probably drooling over the power he possessed to almost overthrow our democracy, until he was advised to call it off. I called it “a day that will live in infamy,” echoing President Roosevelt’s words about Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024 – I was driving by a gas station yesterday and noticed the price of gas. Here in San Francisco—drum roll, please—it’s $5.46 a gallon. I can remember back in the late-1950s that a gallon was 25¢. Why is today’s price so high? I hear the U.S. and other oil producing countries have cut down on production. Also, gas taxes in California are the highest in the country, like 50¢ a gallon.
Donald Trump is on trial in Manhattan for election interference. It’s the first time in American history that any president or former president has been indicted on criminal charges. The trial started yesterday after a jury was chosen last week. Trump seems grumpy as all hell at the trial, his shoulders are slumped and he has a perpetual sneer on his face. A few years back he was on top of the world. Now he’s facing jail time if he’s found guilty of interfering in the 2016 election, the election he won electorally over Hillary Clinton but lost the popular vote by a few million.
Another major event is going on in the Middle East between Israel and Iran’s proxy, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, and also between Israel and Iran and Iran’s other proxies: Hezbollah in Beirut, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shi’ite militias in Iraq and Syria. A little over a week ago, Iran sent over 300 missiles and drones toward Israel, but with the help of the U.S., England, and France, 99% of those missiles and drones were intercepted or shot down.
I’m finishing off Journal 1984: Overcoming Asthma and Changing Careers. It’s the shortest of my yearly journals at around 6000 words. The year 1984 was a most unhealthy year for me. I first had the flu and then asthma hit me hard when I was teaching at McAteer High School (now known as Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts) because I didn’t have a classroom of my own and was running from one classroom to another. All that rushing through crowded hallways, along with the usual stress of teaching English to five classes of ninth-graders, I came down with asthma. At the end of the school year, my doctor advised me to quit teaching. How was I going to support my family? I became a wholesale costume jewelry salesman.
My usual routine is to go over a yearly journal I’m working on after eating breakfast. In the late afternoon I go for a walk in the neighborhood on my weak, arthritic knees. I’ve got to exercise at least once a day, for, as my friend Bill Hellums says, “Motion is Lotion.” For dinner, Joan usually cooks a stir-fry with mixed vegetables and adds pieces of cut-up chicken. I eat while watching cable news on CNN and MSNBC. Sometimes I suspend reality to watch an old movie on Turner Classic Movies. There was so much cigarette-smoking in the movies of 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. After I’ve caught up on my TV viewing, I go into the kitchen, put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, clean the pots and pans, clean the stove, sweep the kitchen floor, then get ready for bed.
What comes to mind now is my family. None of my older brothers—Charles, Dave, Bob, and Maurice—are alive. I sometimes wish they were around so I could find out answers to questions that pop into my mind about our family. My only living brother is Albert who’s changed his name to Avraham. He’s been living in Israel since the late-1970s. He and his family are very religious. He lectures and writes religious books and is considered a rabbi by those who follow his teachings. He and his wife Esther have raised a large family of eight children. All eight are now married and raising their own large families.
Students on many college campuses are protesting the war in Gaza. They’re calling it genocide. And rightly so, because the Israeli Defense Forces are bombing those who they think are Hamas followers, but at the same time they’re killing innocent men, women, and children. The count, so far, is something like 31,000 Palestinians who have died due to the Israeli bombing. Sad. Very sad. And the Israelis keep bombing, thinking they’ll destroy the tunnels Hamas has built under hospitals and schools. But people are dying in those bombings and the world is getting more antisemitic every day, especially college students in the U.S. and around the world.
And so, as Walter Cronkite would say, “And that’s the way it is, Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024.”
Sunday, May 12, 2024 – So many things are happening. War between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Trump is still in the news. That man is a magnet for news. He’s on trial in Manhattan for corrupt business practices and for influencing the 2016 election by paying porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about their sexual tryst. He paid Stormy hush money as soon as the Access Hollywood tape came out, where he boasts of playing with women’s genitals because of his fame. In other words, to soften the blow of the Access Hollywood tape, he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her mouth shut. He also paid hush money to a Playmate of the Year, Karen McDougal. All this took place just before the 2016 election.
Here’s my take on the Palestinian-Israeli war that’s going on in Gaza. Israel’s air force can fly over Gaza and drop bombs on the Palestinians without being shot down, which means there are a lot of innocent Palestinians dying. That’s one aspect of the war. The other aspect is that Hamas, who wants to kill every Jew they can get their hands on, started the war on October 7, 2023. Hamas knew Israel would retaliate with great force, which means they were playing with the lives of their own people just so they could get the world to condemn Israel. Presently, the world is against Israel, even though Hamas started that whole damn mess.
Tuesday, May 14, 2024 – I got this quote in an email from my good friend Charles Lewman today:
“Our global civilization as currently structured is unstable and unsustainable. Ecologically, our civilization sucks out too many of the Earth’s resources for the Earth to replenish, and it pumps out too much waste for the Earth to detoxify.” —Brian McLaren
This is what I’ve been saying for years: The world has got to reduce its population and it has to start recycling everything.
Wednesday, May 15, 2024 – I’m thinking of my old friend Gerry Doud, who I haven’t seen or heard from in 45 years. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know if I would have moved up from Los Angeles to the Bay Area in the summer of 1969. Gerry was living in San Francisco and I had visited him a couple of times. I’d been in the Bay Area several times before that, spending three months in Coast Guard boot camp in Alameda and three months on the training ship Dexter that was docked in Alameda. I spent three Coast Guard reserve summer camps in Alameda. Gerry was going with a woman, Ruth Bender, who lived in El Cerrito, a town just north of Berkeley. Ruth let me stay in her small apartment while she stayed with Gerry in San Francisco, which gave me time to search for a place to start my writing career. I soon found a duplex to share with John Coggen in El Cerrito. John was gone most of the day to do his studies and experiments in geology at UC Berkeley, and that gave me time to sit down and start the first writing project of my life, a novel about a history teacher in an inner-city high school in L.A. who let his students teach. I smoked a little weed before I started writing each day. The weed helped me get through the first draft of A Class of Leaders in four months; it took three more years to finish the book. While working on the novel, I met Sharon Murphy, who was working at the El Cerrito Public Library and was graduating from UC Berkeley in Library Science. When a friend of ours in Berkeley was leaving a small, furnished house she was renting to go to Israel, Sharon and I took her up on her offer to rent the house. Sharon and I lived together for three years until we had an abrupt breakup (she went out with another man, who, by the way, she eventually married). To overcome our sad breakup, I traveled around the country in my VW bus and settled in Portland, Oregon, in 1974. I lived in Portland for three years while writing my second autobiographical novel, Highway Sailor, based on my travels. I supported myself as a substitute teacher. In 1977 I moved to San Francisco. I stayed with my old high school friend Stan Lipkin before I found a flat to share with two other men. While finishing off Highway Sailor, I met Joan Bransten, who had a six-year-old son Sol. Again, I became a substitute teacher. Two years later Joan and I got married and I became Sol’s stepfather. In 1981, Joan gave birth to our son Raymond.
I am now typing on my keyboard while Joan is studying ancient Greek in the living room of the house we bought in the West Portal District in 1994. Our son Ray is living with his wife Ashley and their two sons Joseph (4) and Maxwell (5 months) in Oakland. Sol is living with his wife Jang in Chicago with their 12-year-old son Olby.
Friday, May 24, 2024 – While watching Nova on PBS last night, I found out that we live in a universe that is forever expanding. Everything is moving farther away from everything else. If the universe started with a Big Bang, a solid ball of matter that exploded into the making of the universe, well, ever since that took place 13-14 billion years ago, everything in the universe—planets, solar systems, stars, galaxies—is moving farther and farther apart.
Saturday, June 1, 2024 – It was two days ago on May 30 that Donald J. Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts by a jury in Manhattan. Trump, I can finally say, is now a true criminal, in that he had a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by paying off porn star Stormy Daniels and the 1998 Playboy Playmate of the Year, Karen McDougal. It’s called the Hush Money Trial. Twelve jurors unanimously voted on 34 felony charges to find Trump guilty. Sentencing will take place sometime in the fall by Judge Juan Merchan. [Note: Judge Merchan issued an “unconditional discharge”—a rare penalty for felonies, acknowledging the unique circumstances of sentencing a president-elect.]
I watched the news Thursday night and came away with one important thought. Fox News vehemently opposed what happened at the trial and said it was a total fraud, that Trump never did anything wrong. The other two cable news channels, MSNBC and CNN, said the trial was on the up and up and that Trump deserved to be found guilty. Here’s the thought I came away with: Fox News is to blame for the great division in this country. Trump was found guilty in a trial where the defense had every chance to defend him, except they did a poor job of it. It was the prosecution that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump was guilty on all 34 counts. It was a unanimous decision by a seven-man, five-woman jury, a jury where Trump’s defense team had a choice, just like the prosecuting team, in picking the jury. I know MSNBC and CNN are left-leaning cable channels, but Fox News, they’re just as much to blame for what’s happening in this country in that they, like Republican Senators and House members, go completely along with an insane, irrational Donald Trump. They all know he’s a demagogue and bully and they still go along with him because they’re afraid of his vengeance. Trump should have been put behind bars years ago for lying his ass off on almost everything that came before, during, and after he was president.
I’ve tried with all my might to figure out why people follow a man like Trump. “Why?” I ask myself, “is he followed by millions of people? I know why the Republicans in Congress kowtow to him, because they fear his vengeance, but why do millions of ordinary Americans still follow him, people who have nothing to fear if they didn’t follow him?” Some people say it’s a cult.
It’s like the Jim Jones cult, when he told everyone in Jonestown to drink poison with him and die because that’s what he, the cult leader, wanted. And more than 900 people in that Guyana jungle commune did just what they were told.
Trump’s followers are not as stupid as that, but please tell me, dear Lord, why millions of Americans aren’t AWARE of what Donald Trump will bring to this country? Please shine the light on me as to why he has a base of followers, who, if he doesn’t win the election in November, will say it was rigged. If he becomes president again, this will be the beginning of a breakdown of our almost 250-year-old democratic republic.
Friday, June 21, 2024 – District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida, who was appointed by Donald Trump, ordered a delay of seizing a whole slew of classified documents that Donald Trump pilfered. According to the law, classified documents belong in the National Archives, not at Mar-a-Lago. Something is not on the up and up with Judge Canon. In addition, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court is delaying Trump going on trial for inciting the Insurrection on January 6. They might give him immunity against any offense he’s committed, which would be a travesty, for why should Trump, as president, be given immunity for leading an Insurrection or coup against his own government? It’s beyond me how the majority of our Supreme Court wants to let Trump off the hook for being a traitor. That makes them traitors for even thinking of giving immunity to a man who wanted to overthrow our government.
Willie Mays, at 93, died this week. The whole country knows about it, because he is thought to be one of the greatest all-around baseball players that ever lived. He could run, throw, field, hit for average, hit for power, and use his baseball instincts better than any man who ever donned a baseball uniform. He was a better all-around player than Jackie Robinson, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Joe DiMaggio, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron or anyone else who ever played the game.
Joan turned 84 this week on the 17th. We’re going out on a date this afternoon to her favorite restaurant where they serve Chinese dumplings on Taraval and 25th Avenue. Kingdom of Dumplings is the name of the hole-in-the wall.
I drove down to L.A. last week to be at a gathering at my nephew Ray David Sutton’s house. He and his wife Michele wanted to celebrate Ray’s mother’s 90th birthday. Bertha was married to my brother Dave, who passed away just before he reached his 90th birthday three years ago. Everyone enjoyed the party immensely. Songs were being sung by a wonderful musician, songs from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. The Arabic food that was served was superb. About 50 people attended. Half were family, the rest were friends of Bertha, Ray, and Michele.
I stayed with my cousin Vic at his house in the Hollywood hills. It wasn’t easy getting along with Vic. He’s set in his ways at the age of 80. He’s never been married. Every restaurant we went to he struck up conversations with total strangers. He has a short fuse and lost his temper a couple of times when I didn’t understand what he was saying. He said he’s working with a psychologist on his temper.
My son Ray gave me a Father’s Day card this past Sunday in which he inscribed these words: “Thank you for raising me right, Dad. Love, Ray.” His words meant a lot to me. I mentioned to him, after reading the card, that I hope I wasn’t too hard on him, and he answered that I wasn’t. I surely tried to be a good father to my one and only blood son. In my opinion, I lost my temper a little too much with him. But on the whole, I really tried to encourage and inspire him to be the best he could be.
Wednesday, July 3, 2024 – Joe Biden did so poorly in the debate with Donald Trump that many Democrats around the country, me included, don’t want him to run against Trump in November. He’s feeble-looking. He’ll lose to Trump just for that reason alone, although, in my opinion, he’s been a great president these past 3½ years. He’s gotten people to work on the infrastructure of the country, he’s strengthened NATO against Russia, Iran, and China, he’s all in on saving the environment, he’s gotten us past COVID, plus much, much more. The Democrats have to make a big decision in the coming days as to who is going to be the Democratic nominee for president? Will it be Biden, Kamala Harris, Josh Shapiro, or Gavin Newsom? Right now, it seems like Joe Biden isn’t going to resign.
Trump just got a great big boost from six members of the U.S. Supreme Court, those monarchists. They ruled that he and all future presidents are immune from being prosecuted while in office—such as inciting an Insurrection on the Capitol Building or for confiscating classified documents that should be in the custody of the National Archives or for not admitting defeat in the 2020 election. The man is a criminal and the Supreme Court has given him carte blanche to be above the law.
I fear for this country because those six ultra-conservative Supreme Court justices have just given a criminal free rein to round up millions of immigrants, to build detention camps to hold those immigrants, to use the Department of Justice for retribution against Trump’s detractors, and to lift all regulations for a clean environment. Yes, the Supreme Court is saying Donald Trump can do anything he wants as president and that he won’t be held accountable for it. What were those justices thinking? Don’t they care about our country? Don’t they see what will happen in their 6-3 decision to give immunity to any crazy person who becomes president? And believe me, Donald Trump is crazy and actually belongs in an insane asylum. The man is shameless. He lies and will never stop lying. He’s the biggest con man who has ever been president of the U.S.
Sunday, July 14, 2024 – Yesterday at a rally in western Pennsylvania—Butler, PA, to be exact—Donald Trump was shot in an attempted assassination. The bullet clipped the tip of his right ear. What a lucky man he is to be alive. Although he’s a true enemy of our country, assassination is not the way to rid of the man. The way to get him out of our lives is to vote in November for either Joe Biden or someone younger than Biden. Everything, it seems, is going Trump’s way. Three trials have been put on hold—the Insurrection trial, the classified documents trial, and the Georgia vote he-wanted-changed trial. If he wins the election in November it will change America for a long time to come with his retribution and detention camps and being totally immune from being prosecuted as president. We could possibly lose our democracy if he’s elected. The assassination attempt will actually help him gain more votes.
The shooter, who was immediately shot and killed by the secret service, was a young man of 20. His name was Thomas Matthew Crooks. He shot Trump from about 150 yards away from the rooftop of a shed with an AR-15-style automatic weapon that his father legally purchased for him. He killed one person at the rally and critically injured two others. The bullet that skimmed by Trump’s right ear and bloodied it, means that he will be back to being his old-self again, which is a walking, talking menace to this country.
Sunday, July 21, 2024 – Joe Biden has dropped out of the race for president. Thank goodness. He made the right decision, because even though his mind is intact, it’s hard to understand his mumbling speech. He’s gotten a lot done in his 3½ years and we all should be grateful that he has chosen country over ego, as compared with Trump, who would never concede anything, even if he loses the election come November. It’ll be the same old story again if he loses, “It was rigged!”
Joe Biden has endorsed Kamala Harris. It looks like it’s hers for the taking, but who really knows. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries have yet to announce their endorsements, and so it’s still open as to who will be the Democratic nominee. My favorite, Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania, has just endorsed her. If I were Kamala, I’d pick him as my running mate.
Friday, August 16, 2024 – After taking a blood test yesterday at Kaiser, I found out why I’m getting out of breath while on my walks in the neighborhood. It has something to do with my heart. I e-mailed Dr. Bugatto today to see what we should do about it. Yes, that’s right, I might not be alive in a year or two. Because of that, I thought of my writing. Why should I hold back anything from my writing since I probably don’t have much longer to live?
I thought of the times I tried to take advantage of women. I thought of my outburst at a running back from San Diego Junior College who I tackled in a game and got so mad at his breaking away for long runs that I called him the N-word. I’m not a guy who is prejudice, but that’s what I said to him because I was extremely mad at his gaining so much yardage. When I said that word to him, a look of astonishment came his face. He didn’t say anything, he just looked dumbfounded that a white football player from L.A. Valley Junior College would say such a thing. I’ve regretted that incident ever since it took place in 1959 when I was 19.
Speaking of regrets, I remember I took a girl out in high school just so I could feel her boobs. We had a date, but we didn’t go anywhere except up into the Hollywood hills where I parked and tried to kiss her and feel her up. She completely spurned me and that was the end of that. There was another time I took advantage of a woman in the mid-1970s when I lived in Portland. It was at a wedding party. She was drunk. I led her into a bedroom and laid her down on the bed. I stood at the side of the bed and started rubbing her boobs over her dress. That was all I did, but that was taking advantage of the situation. Those are the only two times I can remember taking advantage of women.
What else can I write about four days shy of my 84th birthday, knowing that I might not have much longer to live? I haven’t told Joan about the results of the blood test. I want to talk to Dr. Bugatto first, to see what we can do about my heart. I don’t think I want to have open heart surgery, if that’s what the good doctor thinks I should have.
Thinking of the football player and the two women last night kept me up until 1:00 a.m. I then picked up the book on my nightstand, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. I couldn’t sleep after putting the book down. An hour later, I picked it up again. What a great writer Wilkerson is. She’s so lucid and concise. It’s all about the caste system in the U.S. The Black and Latin people in this country are still treated like a caste. Donald Trump is relying on the white vote in the upcoming election this November. He’s making a very big deal of immigrants at the southern border being rapists, drug dealers, and killers. Trump, of course, doesn’t hold back his prejudice against Latin and Black people. It was he who started the “birther movement” when Barack Obama became president in 2008, saying Obama was born in in Africa and not in the U.S. Isabel Wilkerson, in her book, shows that Trump considers the Black and Latin people as caste, that it’s been that way in white people’s minds since the first Black people were brought in shackles to this continent in 1619.
What I’m trying to say is, it’s predicted that in 2042 white people in this country will no longer be the majority race, but that people of color will be in the majority. This is why white people go against their own best interests, knowing that the Democrats can help them much more than the Republicans, but they still vote Republican so they can be the dominant race over the non-dominant Black and Latin people. In other words, white people are afraid of losing their majority. Caste and Race have been and still are the biggest problem this country has to overcome. It’ll take years before this country will be a mixture of white marrying Black (like my son Ray with his wife Ashley) or white marrying Asian (like my stepson Sol with his wife Jang). It’ll take my three grandsons, Joseph, Maxwell, and Olby, along with other mixed-race kids and kids of color, to get this country to where people won’t see the color of their skin, but instead they’ll see, first and foremost, human beings.
Saturday, August 31, 2024 – Today is William Saroyan’s birthday—my favorite author of all time. He lived from 1908-1981. He wrote autobiographical stories, which encouraged me to write my own autobiographical stories and novels. He was down-to-earth, he took chances, he wrote about writing and the writing life. I relished everything he wrote. I met Saroyan twice and wrote about those meetings. Writer’s Digest published both pieces.
Eleven days ago, I turned 84. I was born in 1940. The 1940s was the time of Hitler, the Nazis, Europe, Japan, World War II. I just finished listening to a Rachel Maddow podcast about that time from 1939-1945. She brought up something that many Americans, including me, never knew, and that is that senators and representatives in our own government backed Hitler, not only before we entered the war, but during the war, as well. It’s hard to believe that 15-20 members of Congress backed Hitler and tried to undermine our country? Fascism, it will never die. It’s going on right now with Donald Trump, his MAGA people, and the Republicans. They think they’re patriotic. Far from it—they’re goddamn treasonous motherfuckers who are trying to divide this country. Fascism was, is, and always will be going on in the U.S. and around the world. Always. Why are there such poisonous minds inside and outside of our government? Because there will always be people who believe in strong-arm tactics. Donald Trump and his followers are working to destroy democracy in our country so the white race can prevail. That’s why Rachel Maddow warns us in her eight-part podcast, Ultra, that the fascists of the 1940s made a mockery of trials when they were indicted. They stalled and delayed as much as possible, just like Trump and his followers are doing in court battles today. There will always be people like Father Coughlan and Trump and the fascist Congress members of the 1940s who will never give up trying to overthrow this fragile democracy of ours. Those people will always try to get around the law or break the law. People with prejudice against Jews, prejudice against Black people, Latin people, native Americans, Asians, there will always be people trying to put the blame on some minority or minorities. That’s why I think a lot of white people in this country today wish the South had won the Civil War. The South actually did win the war when they built monuments to their so-called heroes, when the Reconstruction period failed because President Andrew Johnson allowed the South’s vile prejudice to continue. And because of Andrew Johnson, racial segregation and discrimination, otherwise known as Jim Crow, carried over into the 20th century. That prejudice persists to this day against Black and Brown people, and even Jews.
Thursday, September 12, 2024 – The Trump-Harris debate took place the other night. Mr. Trump, in my opinion, is making a fool of himself. He’s the “fool on the hill” as the Beatles sang many years ago. He’s a joke. He’s an incessant liar. He looked old and angry. He keeps coming back to the immigration problem that America is having. He says all immigrants are killers, cheats, rapists, and are taking jobs away from Americans. He just won’t let up on immigrants. He says the Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs. He says the Democrats are letting immigrants into the country so they can vote for the Democrats. This is not true. A person has to be a citizen of this country to vote in an election. But here’s the thing about Trump and immigrants: He wants to put them in detention camps, millions of them. Detention camps! That’s reminiscent of Hitler and the concentration camps. Speaking of concentration camps, here’s a quote by English philosopher R.G. Collingwood who warned us about the evil man is capable of: “The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.” Man has done incredibly bad things to his fellow man. Trump wants to do an incredibly bad thing by making us hate Brown and Black immigrants.
Kamala Harris, on the other hand, stood tall during the debate. She explained herself in language that could be understood instead of ranting prejudice and division like Trump. Trump made a fool of himself in almost everything he said, whereas Harris made sense in most of what she said. She said that Trump was a disgrace. She says Trump wants to divide Americans and go backwards. She, on the other hand, wants to unify Americans and go forward, to make opportunity for people, instead of dividing us, instead of being a dictator or a fool who doesn’t care about anything but himself.
I’m worried about Lily, our cleaning lady. She never returns my phone calls. She doesn’t do a good job anymore. She doesn’t dust like she used to. She’s getting old. She doesn’t look healthy. She has a mental problem of forgetting where things belong. [Note: A few months passed before Joan and I found out from her son that she had dementia.]
I saw the last part of a 1937 movie last night, The Life of Emil Zola, starring Paul Muni, on Turner Classic Movies. In the movie, Zola said something like a writer’s words can change the thinking of people. I, at the age of 84, would like to make a dent in people’s thinking, just like Zola did in his life. I really want to do that, but looking at it realistically, I know it’s impossible for me, a little-known writer, to change people’s thinking. But then there was Thomas Paine, an almost complete unknown before he wrote Common Sense, who changed the thinking of the Colonists at the start of and during the Revolutionary War. Zola changed the thinking of France when he wrote his famous letter, “J’Accuse,” about the antisemitic French military establishment to clear a wrongfully accused Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus. I am still looking to change people’s thinking in the remaining years of my life. How am I going to do that? I don’t know yet.
Friday, October 11, 2024 – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are fighting tooth and nail for votes. The election is a little over three weeks away on November 5. It’s beyond me why Trump is making the race close because he’s such an erratic person who has no shame when he lies. He’ll do anything to get elected president. He knows that if he loses there’s a good chance he could go to prison for the many egregious acts he made as president—such as trying to overthrow the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021, and for stealing classified papers and storing them at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The vote should overwhelmingly go against him. But we live in America, where the voting public is not in its right mind sometimes, like when they voted for George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. God, I hope my fellow Americans will wake up and see who and what Mr. Trump truly is: a fraud, a bullshit artist, a cheat, a narcissist, a divider, and, as author Philip Roth called Trump before he died, a megalomaniac.
The San Francisco Giants fired Farhan Zaidi as president of team operations and have hired former Giants catcher and present-day part owner, Buster Posey, to take his place. Buster, who is very intelligent, has given the city hope that the Giants will do better next year. He, in my opinion, needs to hire a big bopper to hit home runs and drive in runs, like in 1993, when the Giants’ new owner, Peter McGowan, signed Barry Bonds for his big bat. Bonds eventually helped them get to the World Series in 2002, except they lost to the Anaheim Angels when they blew a five-run lead late in game six, and then went on to lose game seven.
Tuesday, October 15, 2024 – The country and the world are following what Donald Trump does every day. One man, if elected again, is trying to change the world. He wants power so much that he’ll do anything to get it. Anything! He’ll stomp on the Constitution of the United States. He’ll lie his ass off about anything under the sun, such as Haitians eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. He’ll say the enemy is within, meaning anyone who is against him. He’ll put millions of illegal immigrants in detention camps. His own head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during his administration, General Mark Milley, says that Donald Trump is “a most dangerous person to this country” and “is fascist to the core.”
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 – I’m starting to feel my age. My arthritic knees are weak and I feel pain in my arthritic shoulders if I move them a certain way. I get out of breath easily. I have to sit and get my energy back if I physically work hard on something for 10 or 15 minutes. I’m getting old and it ain’t gonna get any better from here on out.
So, what keeps me going? My mind is still here, very much so. I get to my desk every day and write a journal entry or edit a yearly journal. I’ve edited 15 yearly journals over a period of four and a half years. Most of my journals were handwritten, which makes me transcribe them to my computer. It takes time, time, time to transcribe.
My wife Joan keeps busy, studying ancient Greek and Latin. She studies those languages for the joy of it and because she doesn’t want to come down with dementia or Alzheimer’s. That’s why I keep busy with my journals, so I won’t get dementia or Alzheimer’s. My memory is still here, unlike Joan’s first husband and Sol’s father, Ramon Sender, who just turned 89 and has Alzheimer’s and is staying at a home for people with that disease.
I’m about to drive over to the East Bay at 1:30. I have a poker game to attend at 6:30. It’s a once a month affair in the East Bay, made up mainly of George Krevsky’s friends. Some of us are from the old Royal Flush group that used to meet at Don Ellis’ office in Berkeley once a month for many years. The good old Royal Flush: Jerry Lipkin, Rob Plath, Harry Fish, George Krevsky, and me. We are now a part of George’s Rockridge Poker Group that meets on Wednesdays, which consists of George, Ed Berne, Leon Monroe, Gene Grossman, Joe Lindsay, Richard Goslee, Bob Jaffe, Harry Fish, Rob Plath, Jerry Lipkin, and me.
So once a month, I leave early to avoid traffic to get over the Bay Bridge to Oakland. I go to the library in George’s neighborhood, the Rockridge Branch Library. What I do is get a book, sit in a leather chair, and read as much of it as I can for a few hours. The books I pick are mainly about writers and writing. I don’t read much fiction anymore, except when I get in bed. Right now, I’m reading Herb Gold’s story collection Lovers and Cohorts: 27 Stories. It’s hard for me to understand what he’s writing sometimes. He goes deep into his characters, something I’m not good at. His story endings are weak, in my opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed the book that made him famous: Fathers, an autobiographical novel about his relationship to his hard-working immigrant father. Herb Gold died last year at the age of 99. The few times I met him, he could barely hear what I was saying because he wasn’t wearing, or refused to wear, a hearing aide. He lived many years on Russian Hill. I hear he walked a lot, and this probably led to his longevity.
Wednesday, November 6, 2024 – The election took place yesterday. Donald Trump will be president for the second time come January 20, 2025. I’m very depressed that this country has elected an aspiring dictator to the highest office in the land. What were those who voted for him thinking? They surely weren’t thinking of what climate change can do to the world. All they were thinking about were their goddamn wallets and purses and getting rid of illegal immigrants. They were thinking only of the present, not the future. They were thinking that they could live under a dictator and forget about democracy, that it would make no difference at all in their lives. What a disgrace those voters are to this country. They have allowed the downfall of democracy. They have allowed Trump to deport and put in detention camps millions of mainly hardworking, undocumented immigrants.
Mr. Trump now has the power to do whatever he wants because the Supreme Court has granted him immunity from prosecution. Both Houses of Congress are now made up of a majority of Republicans. Oh my, what a revoltin’ development we Americans have put ourselves in. Such a sad state of affairs. We’ve had nine years of Trump in the news, and now we’ll have four more years, and counting, of that man hogging the headlines.
Tuesday, November 26, 2024 – After going through an angiogram procedure yesterday, I was told I was going to need double bypass surgery, which means they’re going to crack open my rib cage. That’s it. It’s going to be a rough go after surgery, but to look on the bright side, it’ll make for a healthier time on Earth for me. My surgery will take place at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco, it will be done by Dr. Jeremiah Allen, who I met at my bedside right after the angiogram. We decided that surgery will take place on Wednesday, December 11. It’ll take a few months to recover, and then it’ll be up to me to get back into shape and live a normal life by writing journal entries, by editing my yearly journals, by exercising on a daily basis, by seeing my grandsons grow, by adoring my wife Joan more than ever, by being a good and kind person to everyone I come in contact with, and by enjoying life and cherishing it to the fullest. That’s all I can do in the remaining years of my life. I’m looking forward to it.
Joan has been wonderful. I see her love for me. It radiates. She’ll do anything to show her love for me. She says she’s looking forward to taking care of me after the operation. She wants me to live a long, healthy life, not only for my well-being but for her well-being as well.
Thank goodness I stuck to my guns with Dr. Barry Bugatto. He was reluctant to order a stress test for me, but I insisted that I was still getting out of breath when going on my walks. He gave in and set up a stress test for me, which I failed, and that led to the angiogram.
I’m now serious about losing weight. I’m in the 203-205 range on my 5’10” frame. My BMI is five points over what it should be. I’ve just got to eat less, exercise more, and drink more water to start losing the potbelly I presently have. It’s imperative that I do so.
I finished Journal 2012: The Rationals vs. the Irrationals. I now have to put it on my website, Amazon Kindle, and Smashwords. The year 2012 is when Barack Obama was elected president for the second time. It was the second time in three years that the Giants won the World Series. It was about my losing 40 pounds and getting down to 180, it was about self-publishing, politics, and visiting New York City with Joan to see Sol and Jang and their newborn son Olby.
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 – Dr. Jeremiah Allen will perform surgery on my heart next Wednesday, the 11th.
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