2/24/2025

 Monday, February 24, 2025

D+109

1208 Francis of Assisi, 26, is said to have received his vocation in the Portiuncula

1803 US Supreme Court 1st ruled a law unconstitutional (Marbury v Madison)

1977 President Jimmy Carter announced US foreign aid would consider human rights

2022  Russia invaded Ukraine

In bed by 9:00, awake and up at 4:02.    

Prednisone, day 309, 5 gm., day 20, Kevzara, day 6/14. 2.5 mg. at 4:10  a.m. and   p.m.   Other meds at 6:30 a.m. 

JPG's daybreak photo yesterday

  

It's like living in one of my bad dreams, wondering when it will become an all-out nightmare.  During the years in which Kitty and I started every morning exchanging news and thoughts, I so often expressed great fear about what Donald Trump and the rightward tilt in the American electorate meant for the United States, thinking we were heading the way of Israel and much of Europe and alsways ending with "I hope I'm wrong."  I wasn't wrong.       

German election results.  Christian Democrats, 208 seats, 28.52%; AFD, 152 seats, 20.8%; Social Democrats, 120 seats, 16.41%; and Greens, 85 seats, 11.61%.   85% of German voters voted, compared to the record U.S. high participation of 66% in 2020.  The extreme right and extreme left parties captured about 1/3rd of the vote so the moderate right/left parties held about 2/3rds, compared to the U.S. where almost 50% of the voters voted for Trump.  A key issue again was and is immigration and the EU's relatively internal and peripheral open borders leading to the surge in far-right voters.  The good news is that AfD didn't win enough votes to become part of Germany's always-coalition government.  The bad news is the fully 1/5th of German voters backed Afd, the neo-Nazis.

Nice chat with Debbie McGregor this morning over the garbage cart.   We spoke of Geri's recuperating, Joe and Joyce Elwanger at Cross Lutheran Church across the street from the HOP, and good neighbor John's progress in treating leukemia.      

Visit to the VA Medical Center.   I started out with my customary drive through Wood National Cemetery on my way to wish a good morning to Stephanie in the Patients Parking Garage.  My visit with Dr. Ryzka was relatively short and, as usual, pleasant.  It was followed, as expected, by a blood draw where I encountered the nice Black lady who normally works in the waiting room.  She said today was her last day at the VA after working there for 23 years.  She received one of Elon Musk's letters requiring her to list "5 things you accomplished last week' and then a termination email.   I also had a good chat with another vet sitting near me, a parachute rigger in the 82nd Airborne in Vietnam and Cambodia, working on C-130s.

Lizzie and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's 2025 Student Visionaries of the Year Campaign.  We received a letter from Lizzie today soliciting a donation to the LLS.  She always amazes me.  School, drama, forensics, volleyball, gymnastics, what else?  

Geri is working hard to get her left leg to bend and stretch out properly.  If she doesn't reach 90° bending and 0° straightness by the end of the weak, "manipulation" will be necessary.

Anniversary thoughts.   Geri and I visited the Portiuncola during our two-week Italian vacation several years ago.  It has long been completely enclosed in the magnificent Basilica of St Mary of the Angels.  I was most struck by the area just outside the Portiuncola where Francis is said to have died.  His remains are kept in a crypt on the small second sublevel of the Basilica of St. Francis on top of the Asissi hill.  I could tell that many of the visitors who were there when we were were deeply moved to be so near his bier.  I had the same feeling in the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal in Paris.

Among us legal types, there is a great reverence for Marbury v. Madison but we need to remember that the Court's self-proclaimed power to declare laws unconstitutional has probably been more often used to strike down laws designed to help ordinary Americans and powerless minorities than to uphold such laws.  For most of its existence, the Court has been anti-democratic, conservative, and even reactionary.