December 30, 31

Welcome to New Year's Eve Eve. Most of the news/commentary show have been heavy on the reminiscence and short on news. And they are heavy on the repeats. We sorta watched a local news show--local as in Chicago and have switched to Premier League soccer. I intend to spend most of the day stitching.

Heather Cox Richardson posted this answer to Nikki Haley's confusion over the role slavery played in the run up to the Civil War.

31************New Year's Eve*****************************

Although I don't expect much out of 2024, I am glad to be (almost) done with 2023. I don't do resolutions and haven't for a few decades. I recognized a long time ago that the ritual of making resolutions simply set people up for disappointment and self-defeat. I have a habit of setting unrealistically large goals. In this culture we are encouraged to be highly self-critical. We are never pretty (or handsome) enough, thin enough, smart enough, etc. And then the yearly ritual of resolution making encourage us to make big and overly optimistic resolutions which don't last through January.

Instead I decide to try new things or revive old endeavors or make progress "WIPs" (Works in progress). Last year I decided to renew my efforts to learn Spanish and German. I had classes in each in high school and college but hadn't used them in decades. I kept at that almost daily for 10 months. Not bad. I really did need the 2 month break but it is time to go back to work. I completed several needlework projects. That is something I will continue.

David Kaiser's blog post today presents a history of the 14th Amendment Section 3. It has been applied before but like so much of our history has been conveniently forgotten, if it was learned at all.

Stray thought on Nikki Haley's promise to pardon The Former Guy if she wins the Presidency: she claims it is the duty of a President to act for the good of the country as a whole (true) and that the way to move forward after the chaos of January 6 is to pardon the major instigator of the chaos (false.) President Gerald Ford's pardon of former President Richard Nixon did not help the country heal because Nixon never really acknowledged his wrongdoing and never really paid a penalty for it, and his notion, expressed after the pardon and his resignation, that "if a president does it, it isn't illegal." The growth of the imperial presidency continued and culminated in The Former Guy. To move forward you have to acknowledge and learn from the past, not consign it to a black hole of memory. Otherwise how do we know we are actually moving forward and not retracing missteps.