Without a laptop computer for several days, it was difficult to write.  The replacement, a new Lenovo Thinkpad was ready yesterday.  Now, I must, one task at a time, wrangle the new machine into the arrangement which is suited to my style of use.

Much has taken place in the interim since my mind/body has been away from the glowing screen.   Of course gun play has continued unabated in these United States.  A society awash with guns is a dangerous place, especially in population centers.

The Supreme Court, the final arbiter in a country defined by law (rules) has decreed:

1. Affirmative action is prohibited in the admissions process for Universities.  Do not expect any helping hand if you are a smart non-white young adult from a family of modest means.  You get to compete in the scrum of white-skinned applicants with families of financial means.  Best wishes to you!  2. A business owner is permitted legally to refuse service to any potential customer, because god has spoken out loud or in a small silent voice to say the life-style of said customer is repulsive.  3. For the thousands of struggling families who anticipated loan forgiveness for 20k of student debt, — forget about it!  No forgiveness for you!  Banks and investment firms are not to be denied a full serving of your income for years to come…

And so it goes.  Rule making and defining — is like making sausage, a crushing and grinding activity.

Those moralists who command man
first of all and above all to gain control of himself
thus afflict him with a peculiar disease;
namely, a constant irritability
in the face of all natural stirrings and inclinations –as it were,
a kind of itching.

Whatever may henceforth
push, pull, attract, or impel such
an irritable person from inside or outside,
it will always
seem to him as if his self-control
were endangered.

No longer
may he entrust himself
to any instinct or free wingbeat;
he stands in a fixed position
with a gesture that wards off,
armed against himself, with sharp and mistrustful eyes
–the eternal guardian of his castle,
since he has turned himself into a castle.

Of course, he can achieve greatness this way.
But he has certainly become
insufferable for others, difficult for himself,
and impoverished and cut off
from the most beautiful fortuities of his soul.

Also from all further instruction.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 4, Section 305  by Friedrich Nietzsche