2/17/2025

 Monday, February 17, 2025

D+102

1964 US Supreme Court ruled- 1 man 1 vote (Westberry v Sanders)

1972 British Parliament voted to join the European Economic Community

In bed at 9 and up at 4:30.  2°, wind chill -13°.  

Prednisone, day 302, 5 mg., day 13, Kevzaara, day 13/14.  2.5 mg. prednisone at 4:45 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.   Other meds at 10 a.m.    

“...I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it again. . .  Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor 

Listless today, again, half brain dead, tired despite a decent night's sleep.  Meh.  Yecch.  Mickey the Mope.  Pity party.

The lid of my birdseed storage can is filled with seeds and a suet cake lying on our stoop.  I can't negotiate the deep snow between our front door and the bird feeders, so this was my feeble attempt to provide some sustenance to our neighborhood birds on these frigid mornings.  The attempt appears to be a failure since I see no sign of any activity around the lid and no footprints in the surrounding snow.  The birds keep appearing at the depleted tube feeders and suet cake holders and on the ground beneath them.

Telling Headlines: WaPo: (1) Musk’s DOGE seeks access to personal taxpayer data, raising alarm at IRS. (2) Trump asks the Supreme Court to allow him to fire an independent agency leader. (3) The president wants to shut down the Education Department. Is it sleight of hand? (4)  Under Trump, the U.S. that once united Europe now divides it. (5) Acting archivist, inspector general for National Archives forced out.

Der Übermenschen.  Trump and Musk, maybe Vance and Vought for different reasons.  They all believe they are superior to the mass of men.  Trump and Musk believe their superiority is based largely on their superior genes and that those with a great collection of genes are likely to be great successes in life, success being measured by an entrepreneurial bent, wealth, and power.  They grew up in privileged circumstances, the sons of entrepreneurial, wealthy fathers, and went to good schools they seem to consider of less importance in their development and characters than their genetic inheritance.  Their focus on genetic determinism they share with others so inclined, like the Nazis.  The rest of us, mere employees of more gifted humans, presumably are lesser creatures, untermenschen, underlings.  I suspect that the Christian Nationalists J. D. Vance and Russell Vought also consider themselves to be übermenschen, having been gifted with superior insight into the nature of the Universe, Reality, and the Divine Will, by God.  

We watched the first 2/3rds of SNL50 last night.  It was disappointing.  

Geri's physical therapy went very well today.  She has another session tomorrow morning.

I did some more work on my knockoff van Dongen but made the painting worse.  My No. 1 rule of painting is "Know when o stop."  Maybe I can do some salvage work tomorrow.  I should have been less concerned with mimicking every feature of van Dongen's original.  He knew what he was doing and I don't.  Failures: her face, her fingers, her sleeve, the fog or mist or steam to her right.  I should probably step away from the painting for at least a day, maybe longer.

Legal Ethics teaching materials.  While gathering 3-ring notebooks for 2 and 1/2 years of my daily journal pages, I opened some notebooks with some of the teaching materials I developed for the years  I taught Legal Ethics at MULS.   I impressed myself with how much work went into those materials.  I just skimmed them but I saw the extensive materials I put together on the discovery process in civil litigation and on fee-setting and billing.   I could see how the materials reflected my own ethical discomforts with the realities of practice in a civil litigation firm.  They were also expressed in my speeches on "The Ethics of Legal Ethics" and "The Practice of Law as an Occasion of Sin."  No wonder some students thought I was such an asshole.

I've lost my 2nd favorite cane, the one I bought for my father more than 20 years ago.  I think I left it in the grocery cart at Sendik's that I used a couple days ago.  I had two fairly heavy bags of groceries, one for each hand, which distracted me from my cane.  I called the customer service desk and, rats, no cane in the lost and found.  The cane had/has sentimental value for me.  Alas.  Executive function failure.

jki