Trump at war.

The war goes on. The biggest democracy, now in the grip of a deranged corrupt plutocrat, is attempting to overthrow a corrupt deranged theocracy. That is a most unedifying spectacle at best and a global tragedy in reality. Trump is now putting as they said in Vietnam "boots on the ground" and that curiously may prove to be his undoing. The Americans if again in receipt of body bags filled with former soldiers then may decide such action is unwelcome either against Iran or in support of any of the squad of corrupt gulf Arab States which are marginally the victims but enthusiastically the proponents of this outrageous enterprise. The UK has taken a reasonable center path supporting and failing to support as appropriate. The prime minister is an unimpressive figure overall but is behaving impeccably at the moment despite urging us in various directions which are understandable if not always worthy of adopting. The corruption at the heart of Trump's enterprise and his quotidian dusdsunf for the military may yet provoke a response. Many years ago there was a movie Seven Days in May https://share.google/hgz8ish59hECfXXh2 showing an attempted military coup against a liberal president. May is coming soon and a military coup against Trump would be highly original. Innovative even. Scriptwriters at the ready. 

Anniversaries Read it.

By Literature/Novels/Uwe Johnson.
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/10/15/on-uwe-johnson-poet-of-both-germanys/
An East German who live in the west both in US and latterly UK. Died aged about 50. He was the same age as his most noted creation Gesine Cresspahl who was born in 1933 and is in 1967-8 the central character of his masterpiece "Anniversaries".
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/books/review-anniversaries-uwe-johnson.html
The epic novel plays out from 1st August 1967 to 31st July 1968 in 365 daily episodes. Most allude to contemporary events in US and and often VietNam. Each episode contains part of Gesine's life story from her youth in Germany until the present with her living in the upper west side of Manhattan, but also much of the lives of her parents and their families. 

Bring it on.

So the winter solstice is past. Apparently, it took our ancient ancestors several days to be certain of this fact. lacking as they did the modern instruments available to astronomers. And so we celebrate on Thursday. This would have been in the begining the festival of Yule or some such before it was hijacked by the Christians as Christmas Day. The Romans, slow in the uptake perhaps didn't get around to having the New Year for another week. But that's good, because we're getting our shot at celebrating twice. 

Enjoy and hope you avoid unnecessary complications.

The Winter Solstice

Today is the wnter solstice. Here is a delight from RobertGraves. Juan. 

To Juan at the Winter Solstice

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether are learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin’s silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right she crooks a finger smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving—cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea—blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.

Denigration of poor women

Chat with Gemini.

Been reading Madness: A History by Pietikainen. Long account of history of efforts to understand neurosyphilis with details of the observed epidemiology often swept up with role of prostitutes in its transmission. All reasonable enough save for no word at all on the fates of those women not even a mention of the fact that their outcomes globally are seemingly not worthy of comment.

Your observation hits on a profound and deliberate "silence" in the historiography of medicine. In Pietikäinen’s Madness: A History, as in many classical medical histories, the prostitute is often treated as a vector—a biological delivery system—rather than a subject with a fate of her own.

​This omission isn't just an accidental oversight; it’s a reflection of how the 19th and early 20th-century medical establishments viewed these women. Here is a breakdown of why their "fates" are so rarely recorded and what we actually know about what happened to them.

​1. The Vector vs. The Victim

​In the epidemiology of neurosyphilis, the focus was almost exclusively on the "Great Men" who fell to the disease (artists, philosophers, and the bourgeois). Because neurosyphilis—specifically General Paresis of the Insane (GPI)—could take 10 to 20 years to manifest, the focus remained on the person who had the "clout" to be admitted to a private asylum or a prestigious clinic.

• ​The Prostitute: In medical records, she appears at the moment of transmission.
• ​The Patient: He appears at the moment of degeneration. The medical narrative essentially "ends" for the woman the moment she is identified as the source, as she held no social or "scientific" value to the observers beyond that point.

​2. The Institutional "Lock"

​For many of these women, their fate was tied to the Contagious Diseases Acts (in Britain) and similar "regulated" systems in Europe.

• ​Lock Hospitals: Women suspected of being "common prostitutes" were forcibly examined. If found infected, they were confined to "Lock Hospitals."

• ​Treatment as Punishment: The "treatment" usually involved massive, debilitating doses of mercury, which caused tooth loss, kidney failure, and neurological tremors (hydrargyria) that were often indistinguishable from the disease itself.
• ​Erasure from Records: Once released from a Lock Hospital, these women often moved, changed names, or died in workhouses. Because they lacked the "respectable" family structures that kept records (wills, obituaries, gravestones), they effectively vanished from history.

​3. The Biological Paradox

​Interestingly, there was a long-standing medical myth that prostitutes were somehow "hardened" against the worst effects of syphilis, or that they didn't develop neurosyphilis as often as men.

• ​The Reality: They died much younger. While a wealthy man might live long enough to develop the late-stage brain rot of neurosyphilis, a 19th-century sex worker was far more likely to die in the secondary stage from tuberculosis, malnutrition, or the toxicity of mercury treatments before the disease ever reached her central nervous system.
• ​Infant Mortality: A significant part of their "fate" was the loss of children. Syphilis-induced miscarriages and stillbirths were the norm, often leaving these women with no surviving kin to remember their history.

​4. The "Innocent" vs. the "Guilty"

​Historical accounts often divided women into two categories:

1. ​The Innocent Wife: Infected by a straying husband. Her fate is often recorded as a tragedy of "marital cruelty."
2. ​The Prostitute: Her infection was viewed as a "professional hazard" or a moral inevitability.

​Because the medical community viewed her fate as "earned," they rarely felt the need to document it with the same clinical pathos they reserved for the "decline of a great mind."

​Suggested Reading for the "Missing" Perspective

​If you want to find the voices Pietikäinen leaves out, I recommend looking into:

• ​Judith Walkowitz: Prostitution and Victorian Society. She brilliantly deconstructs the Contagious Diseases Acts and the actual lives of the women targeted by them.
• ​The Campaign of Josephine Butler: She was one of the few contemporary figures who fought against the medical "objectification" of these women and documented their suffering in the Lock Hospitals.n

A poetic prophecy for our time.

AUGUST 1968 The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips. W. H. Auden Rings a few bells. ( Blogger can't do line breaks. Sorry.)

Trump has done his work.

The hostages are free. Now the genocide can move up a gear with no bargaining chips for the Gazans. Two million Gazans to be processed. Israelis seem to have learnt from experience. Or have they. We need to ensure they understand the inevitable fates of mass murderers. Germany can tell it's tale.