2/24/2026

 Monday, February 24, 2026

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

2025  The United Nations General Assembly votes 93–18, with 65 abstentions, to pass a resolution condemning Russia's war against Ukraine. The 18 countries that voted against include the United States, Russia, Israel, Belarus, and North Korea. 

2025  Texas placed several major cities in the state on high alert due to a measles outbreak that spread to 99 people in Texas and New Mexico, the third-largest outbreak since it was considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000.

In bed at 8:45, awake at 4:35, up at at 4:50.  22/8/36/17.  SSW 192° wind at 11 mph, gusts to 25 mph.  Sunny, windy, cold.

Morning meds and 3rd half-dose of Bisopolol at 9 a.m.

Much to write about today, but side-tracked by news of Trump cover-up.

Visit with Dr. Patel.  I saw Dr. Patel, a VA psychiatrist, for the third time this morning while Geri was representing the two of us at Richard Goldberg's burial service.

The artist at the VA yesterday.    

Finished The Last Sweet Mile.

NPR disclosure re DOJ non-disclosure: Cover up.

From 2 years ago today:

"I'm grateful that I was able to write a memoir about my first 30 or so years of life and that I had and have access to so many other memoirs and other histories of various experiences in my life.  I'm grateful that at some time somehow I came to derive some pleasure or satisfaction from writing, (or is it a need to write?).  When did this occur?  Not in high school or college, for I don't recall ever taking pleasure in writing an academically-required essay or report.  I suspect it started during my last year in the Marines at NAS Willow Grove when I had among my ancillary duties the job of Public Information Officer and I became familiar with Fowler's Modern English Usage, Follett's Modern American Usage, the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, and a NYT newsletter that collected misusages from the newspaper that got past the copy editors.  After that, I found out in law school that I was pretty good at writing those 3-hour essay exams that were then de rigueur.  On top of that, I was Lead Article Editor and then Editor-in-Chief of the law review and had a job as the editorial assistant for two faculty-edited (really edited by me) commercial law publications.  In the following year, as a new faculty member, I was the Legal Writing professor for about 120 1L law students, a cruel and exploitative assignment but one that made me an expert on how poorly many, perhaps most, college graduates write.  In any case, over those 5 years, from 1966 to 1971, I became a frequent and usually careful writer.  And of course, as a faculty member and later as a practicing lawyer, I did a lot of writing.  I relied on my good friend and law office colleague, David Branch, to edit some of my work and found out from him that I was (and still am) wordy.  I use too many words to say things that can be said more concisely.  His edits were always correct and useful, and I usually accepted them but often opted to stick with my wordy excesses simply because it was the way I expressed myself then and still do, with lots of surplusage.  Plus, in writing these daily journal entries that I know will be read by no one but me, I easily fall into run-on sentences, inappropriate hyphenation and capitalization, misplaced modifiers, and awkward constructions.  David Branch's red pencils would need frequent sharpening for editing of my daily musings.

    What prompted these reflections was reading Hillary Kelly's review of the several memoirs of Diana Athill  in the 2/21/2024 New Yorker titled "A Memoirist Who Told Everything and Repented Nothing."  I especially enjoyed this quote about old age from one of Athill's late-life memoirs:

We tend to become convinced that everything is getting worse simply because within our own boundaries things are doing so.  We are becoming less able to do things we would like to do, can hear less, see less, eat less, hurt more, our friends die, we know that we ourselves will soon be dead. . . . It’s not surprising, perhaps, that we easily slide into a general pessimism about life, but it is very boring and it makes dreary last years even drearier.

It made me wonder, only momentarily, whether my "general pessimism about life" is just attributable to my old age rather than to real conditions in the U.S. and in the world.  I don't think so since there appear to be so many much younger people who share my pessimism."