Monday Night, 10:48 PM

The Daily Report

It is 10:40 pm, and I am so very tired. I will be brief.

I made my appointment with my counselor. It was a good session. It seems I am doing the right things in the right way. I worry that the depression will return and turn straight lines into squiggles.

After that, I went to DIY. I got the Paycom problem solved and quit. Then to McClure's for RC Cola.

I talked to KH when I got back to the room. This was after 4 pm. Make a light dinner, and got to work.

First off was getting my pay stub to my PO. Then answering an email from MW. Then it was working on my story. “Road Tripping.” 

I would take breaks and check my email.

 “Colonel Tom” got another rejection: 

Thank you for submitting your piece to Mudroom Mag for review. We are grateful for your interest in the magazine and the chance to engage with your writing and thinking. Unfortunately, we do not have a place for your work in our upcoming issue. We hope it finds a loving home.

Best,
Maiasia Grimes

MudRoom Mag

I finished with 17,697 words in “Road Tripping.” Six more pages, I think. I will say I think I did better than yesterday.  I added about 1,000 words to the story. At this rate, I will finish in April or May.

I need to send my tax forms to my sister. I will do that in the morning.

It is 10:47 PM

Reading Around

Well, the Canadians have their own problems with Canadian geese according to The Walrus' How to Make Peace with Canada Geese. Some interesting facts learned:

Why do Canada geese live in cities in the first place? It’s counterintuitive, from their point of view. There are buses, trucks, and Subarus; there are children who throw rocks; there’s noise, brutalist architecture, men with baseball bats and umbrellas. They can fly—why are they not living out where the drive-in theatres used to be? In fact, a city provides the ideal conditions for geese to live and breed. “If you’re a goose flying overhead and looking down,” says Shapiro, “you see this big city with many retention ponds, lush green lawns.” The retention ponds protect them from predators, of which, in the city, there are few save a scattering of foxes that don’t swim. Fresh-cut lawns provide ample food. And, in Canada, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994, prohibits the disturbance of migratory bird eggs and nests without a permit (which the University of Manitoba had acquired in 2017) from the Canadian Wildlife Service.

So, for the most part, humans are not as predacious as, say, raccoons, which take eggs without permits from the Canadian Wildlife Service. Tall buildings are ideal places for geese to build nests: they can see in all directions. Geese are resilient. “People say we encroached on the wildlife,” with our urban sprawl and development, says Sterba. “But that’s only half the story. They encroached right back. And the reason is because our habitats are better than theirs. Especially for deer and geese, we put out all sorts of food for them. We’ve created this vast buffet that draws them in.”

Not everyone sees it this way. Colleen Cassady St. Clair, professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, calls them, clinically, “exploiters.” There are birds like horned grebes and northern shovelers that, over time, have left the cities because they can’t tolerate rackets. There are urban adapters, like mallards, who make do reluctantly. The exploiters, the geese, seem bent on taking over altogether. “If more people realize that Canada geese are actually a lot like rats,” she says, “there would be more societal support for proactive management.” Proactive management: egg removal, egg destruction, daily hunting quotas, or large-scale roundups and culls in which the adult geese are killed.

I think they should provide meals for the starving.

Let us hope the Indiana Supreme Court puts a leash on Indiana's Attorney General: Rokita under investigation by disciplinary commission for statements about Indiana doctor.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita is under investigation by the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission in relation to his televised statements about the doctor who oversaw a medication abortion for a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio.

Documents first reported by the Indiana Citizen additionally show Rokita’s office hired a Washington, D.C. law firm to help litigate a medical licensing case against Dr. Caitlin Bernard. 

The same lawyer is also representing Rokita in his disciplinary case but it is unclear if state funds are paying him.

###

Last summer, former Indiana University Maurer School of Law Dean Lauren Robel alleged that Rokita made “false or baseless” statements about Bernard. She filed a complaint with the disciplinary commission in July.

Robel further asserted to the disciplinary commission that Rokita did not retract those comments even after they were shown to be false.

“If he can throw the entire weight of his office without consequence to attack Dr. Bernard, he can do so to target any private citizen with whom he disagrees,” Robel wrote in a letter obtained by the Indiana Citizen. “This is the opposite of the rule of law.”

Indiana’s professional conduct for attorneys states that lawyers holding public office assume legal responsibilities “going beyond those of other citizens.” A lawyer’s abuse of public office “can suggest an inability to fulfill the professional role of lawyers.”

The rules instruct lawyers not to “make a false statement of material fact or law,” and instead “be truthful when dealing with others on a client’s behalf.”

Attorneys are additionally required to avoid “misrepresentations,” which can occur if a lawyer “incorporates or affirms a statement of another person that the lawyer knows is false.”

Private attorney live in fear of the Disciplinary Commission, so should public lawyers. 

From LitHub: Five Surreal Works of Fiction You Probably Haven’t Read… and Slaughterhouse-Five. Well, could I omit anything referencing Vonnegut?

Musical Accompaniment

One of my favorite bands, one not known of around here, The Amazing Crowns:

Done.

sch