Good Monday morning.
Well, in true #UpstateNY fashion, we’ve gone from winter to summer with only a passing nod to spring.
I actually turned on the air conditioning. In MAY?! Who does that?
People with very shaggy black dogs who seem like they’re always overheating, that’s who. In other words, me. But, I’ve got to think I’m not alone.
I hit up the Troy Farmer’s Market on Saturday, and was reminded of just how great a recurring event that is. (Not to say that I don’t like the other area farmer’s markets, to be clear).
With the sunshine and the delicious food smells and the fresh ramps on offer and the many doggos sniffing around, and the historic buildings and Hudson River as a picturesque backdrop, and all the people smiling and enjoying being outside…it was just pure happiness.
I hope you had a similar moment or two to savor this past weekend, though I suspect many – if not all – of us struggled to some extent with the news of the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo. As more details emerged, it just became harder and harder to fathom the extent to which some people hate others and the lengths to which they will go to hurt them.
And there were also shootings elsewhere in the nation – Texas and California – sparking yet another round if calls for additional gun control that will no doubt become a focus of the upcoming elections.
Perhaps this is a fitting change of topic: Today is Vesak Day, which I’ve also seen spelled “Wesak”, (AKA Buddha Jayanti, Buddha Purnima, and/or Buddha Day).
Regardless of the name you use, the intent is the same: This day commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Siddhartha Gautama, more commonly known as the Buddha. All of those milestones are said to have occurred on the same day in the Buddha’s life.
This day is usually celebrated on the first full moon of the lunar calendar, but since Buddhist culture is vast and diverse, it’s observed on different days by different traditions. In Japan, for example, which started using the Gregorian calendar in the 19th century, Buddha’s Birthday is always on April 8.
Siddhartha Gautama was a real person. He was born into the royal family around 563/480 BCE in Nepal (historians are not quite certain of the exact date).
After six years of ascetic practice, he attended enlightenment at the age of 35, and henceforth was known as “Buddha,” which means “the awakened one.”
Gautama/Buddha died in India at the age of 80. The followers of the religion he founded, Buddhism, believe that the way to achieve Nirvana (a place of perfect peace and happiness, kind of like heaven, but not) is through leading a moral life and meditation on the Eightfold Noble Path.
The eight elements of the path are: correct view, correct intention, correct speech, correct action, correct livelihood, correct effort, correct mindfulness, and correct concentration.
Buddhism preaches compassion and peace and maintains that suffering caused by desire.
Buddhists believe in reincarnation – a cycle of being reborn, which can only end with enlightenment and the extinguishment of craving – and also karma, which is defined as “universal causal law by which good or bad actions determine the future modes of an individual’s existence.”
Vesak Day was recognized in 1999 by the UN General Assembly. It is generally celebrated by gathering at the temple, which has been decorated with flowers, and also by pouring water over statues of the Buddha to symbolize the cleansing of bad karma.
It’s also traditional to engage in works of charity and acts of kindness, and to refrain from all killing, which translates into avoiding the consumption of meat.
It’s going to be a bit of a roller coaster of a week, weather-wise, with temperatures fluctuating from the 80s (today) to the 60s (Tuesday and Wednesday) and then back to the 80s. Today will start out partly cloudy with severe thunderstorms possible in the afternoon.
In the the headlines…
At least 10 people were killed in a mass shooting by a gunman wearing military-style gear — who possibly live streamed the mayhem — at a Buffalo supermarket Saturday.
The supermarket is in a predominately Black neighborhood, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) north of downtown Buffalo. The surrounding area is primarily residential, with a Family Dollar store and fire station near the store.
“It’s like walking onto a horror movie, but everything is real. It is Armageddon-like,” a police officer told the Buffalo News. “It is so overwhelming.”
Two people were killed and three more were taken to a hospital with injuries after a shooting yesterday at a bustling Houston, TX flea market, and multiple people were also shot at a church in Southern California, authorities said.
The victims also included a retired Buffalo police officer, Aaron Salter Jr., 55, who worked at the grocery store as a security guard and was being hailed as a hero for confronting the gunman.
In response to the Buffalo shooting, President Biden called on Americans to “work together to address the hate that remains a stain on the soul of America.” He shied away from advocating for stronger gun control.
Biden and his wife Jill will visit Buffalo today “to grieve with the community that lost ten lives in a senseless and horrific mass shooting,” the White House later said in a statement.
“I appreciate (Biden’s) outreach & the opportunity to tell him about my hometown’s strong, resilient & fighting spirit,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said. “We are the City of Good Neighbors & I told him we will welcome him any time.”
All but one victim was over the age of 50 and eleven of the victims were black, while two were white, police said. They included local a food pantry chef and the mother of the city’s former fire commissioner.
The gunman began shooting in the parking lot then moved inside the store. Security guard Aaron Salter fired multiple shots but none penetrated the gunman’s armor. The gunman killed Salter and then stalked through the aisles, shooting shoppers.
The alleged shooter, Payton Gendron, 18, of Conklin, had researched the local demographics while looking for places with a high concentration of Black residents, arriving there at least a day in advance to conduct reconnaissance, law enforcement officials.
Gendron was arraigned just before 8 p.m. and charged with first-degree murder on Saturday night. If convicted he could face life in prison with no parole, the highest punishment allowed in New York State, the DA said.
Gendron, had previously threatened a shooting at his high school last June, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said the then-17-year-old was brought in for a mental health evaluation afterward.
Before he graduated from high school in Binghamton, Gendron said he wanted to commit a murder-suicide, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the matter. He had a psychiatric evaluation in a hospital, but was released after several weeks.
That account was confirmed by Special Agent Steven Belongia of the F.B.I., who said that Gendron was “not on the radar” of federal authorities.
The revelation raised questions about whether this was yet another missed opportunity to put a potential mass shooter under closer law enforcement scrutiny, get him help, or make sure he didn’t have access to deadly firearms.
“I want people to talk about Buffalo as the last place this ever happened,” Hochul, a Buffalo native, said. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, because we are all God’s people.”
“Lord, forgive the anger in my heart but channel that into my passion to continue to fight to protect people, get the guns off the streets and silence the voices of hatred and racism and white supremacy all over the internet,” Hochul said.
The governor said that the Buffalo shooter’s gun was purchased legally at a gun store in New York. The high-capacity magazine must have been purchased elsewhere, she said, because they are banned in New York.
Robert Donald of Vintage Firearms in Endicott, NY said he learned from federal agents Saturday night that he had recently sold the 18-year-old suspect a Bushmaster assault weapon. “I know I didn’t do anything wrong, but I feel terrible about it,” he said.
Democrats are vowing to push through domestic terrorism legislation to improve intelligence sharing and coordination between law enforcement agencies after the Buffalo shooting, despite growing GOP opposition that could scuttle even those modest efforts.
Hochul demanded that the technology industry take responsibility for its role in propagating hate speech. Twitch said in a statement that it ended Gendron’s live streaming transmission “less than two minutes after the violence started.”
The quick response of Buffalo police may have prevented the death toll from surpassing the 10 victims. But the circumstances around the peaceful surrender of the white supremacist shooter remained a sore spot among some in the Black community.
The Buffalo shooting is renewing fierce condemnation of the racist conspiracy known as the “great replacement theory,” after a racist manifesto believed to have been written by the gunman was uncovered online.
Hochul pushed back against political opponents who say she is not doing enough to confront an ongoing surge of violent crime as she pursues a full term in office this year.
One of Hochul’s Democratic gubernatorial primary opponents, Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi, blasted her for saying “we got a lot done” regarding her administration’s anti-crime efforts.
Ukraine began a counteroffensive toward the eastern city of Izyum aimed at disrupting Russian supply lines into the Donbas region, officials said, as Ukrainian forces continued clearing villages north of Kharkiv.
Russia appears to be shifting its immediate ambitions on the eastern front of its invasion of Ukraine, as battlefield setbacks and dwindling troop numbers drain its war effort.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned his Finnish counterpart that joining NATO would risk damaging relations with Moscow.
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos said the nation’s newly formed Disinformation Governance Board should take a look at the White House after a tweet from Biden which attempted to link skyrocketing inflation with the country’s corporate tax rate.
Biden defended the White House’s response to a months-long shortage of infant formula in the United States and dismissed the idea that his administration should have acted sooner, saying they “moved as quickly as a problem became apparent to us.”
Manhattan Rep. Carolyn Maloney demanded answers from manufacturers about the nationwide shortage of baby formula that has put parents and childcare providers on edge.
Republican North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik, who describes herself as “pro-life,” blamed the White House and mysterious “pedo grifters” on Friday for America’s infant formula shortage — and called for denying formula to migrant’s babies.
Vice President Harris will lead a presidential delegation to the United Arab Emirates today, following the death of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Friday, the White House announced.
Nearly two weeks after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, protesters gathered in Washington, New York and elsewhere.
More than 380 rallies organized under the slogan “Bans Off Our Bodies” were planned Saturday, including in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Austin.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams slammed the pro-life movement as “radical” on Saturday and pledged that he would “fight” to ensure there are “no” limitations on abortion.
When New York legalized abortion in 1970, nearly two-thirds of New York City’s abortions were for women from elsewhere. If Roe is overturned, a new surge is expected.
North Korea has confirmed 15 more deaths and hundreds of thousands of additional patients with fevers as it mobilizes more than a million health and other workers to try to suppress the country’s first COVID-19 outbreak, state media reported.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guided an emergency politburo meeting and ordered the military be used to stabilize the supply of medicines in Pyongyang as the country battles its first confirmed Covid-19 outbreak.
According to public health experts, COVID-19’s outsized impact on the US – 1 million deaths, the highest among large, wealthy countries – can be attributed in part to underinvestment in long-term care, in primary care and in public health departments.
The United States and Australia share similar demographics, but their pandemic death rates point to very different cultures of trust.
Nearly 319,000 US COVID-19 deaths could have been averted if all adults had gotten vaccinated.
The official White House Twitter account posted false COVID-19 information, wrongly claiming there was “no vaccine available” when Biden took office in January 2021.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said holding up a COVID-19 relief bill as a way to demand a vote on Title 42, a Trump-era pandemic public health policy that allows for the rapid expulsion of migrants at the border and prevents them from seeking asylum, is “blackmail”.
The pandemic’s toll on adolescents’ mental health is bringing renewed focus to the lack of treatment options for psychiatric patients under age 18.
New York hospitals received mixed safety grades in connection to the COVID-19 pandemic response, as the state’s health care system ranked among the worst nationally, a consumer watchdog group reported.
Almost three-quarters of New York state under the CDC’s high-risk designation for COVID is being urged to wear face masks in indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status.
C.D.C. guidelines suggest most people in the state should wear masks indoors, including in schools, although New York City cases remained lower.
As state Democrats and Hochul consider their priorities in the final two weeks of the legislative session, Senate Democrats and congressional hopefuls are are awaiting a final draft of the new political maps unveiled this week by a Steuben County judge.
With the state legislative session set to end June 2, Adams still needs some big items from Albany. And with the Democratic gubernatorial primary near, Hochul needs an Adams endorsement. What they do next could define their future relationship.
Hochul unveiled a chicken-in-every-pot style payout to needy New Yorkers as she runs for a full term in office.
New Yorkers will have to pay “hundreds of billions of dollars” in higher utility bills due to the state’s “Green New Deal”-inspired plan, according to a top energy regulatory official — who accused lawmakers of hiding the true cost of the bill.
Rochester Sen. Jeremy Cooney introduced a bill that would legalize what would essentially be licensed community marijuana gardens for people who aren’t able to cultivate cannabis at their own homes.
Adams told members of a Manhattan synagogue on Saturday that hate crimes dropped by 40 percent citywide last month, insisting he’s still a cop at heart whose administration has made fighting antisemitism a top priority.
Adams said New York City will completely eliminate 30 fines on businesses and reduce about 90 others as part of ongoing efforts to cut red tape.
Adams blasted gun rights advocates, as well as their argument that “good guys with guns” save lives, saying simply that their position on the issue is “dumb.”
Advocates say Adams’ approach address homelessness is a return to misguided tactics. They argue that the policing-focused strategies the city is using to persuade people to go to shelters in fact perpetuate the decades-long crisis.
Did Eric Adams’ 2024 presidential campaign just begin at an education policy announcement in Harlem?
Adams called the idea of people legally carrying guns in New York to make the City safer “dumb.”
An NYPD official blamed bail reform for the number of guns flooding the Big Apple’s streets and worried about the proliferation of untraceable “ghost guns” in a radio interview.
New York City is ramping up construction of a new jail in Queens as part of its plan to phase out problem-plagued Rikers Island — sparking outrage from residents.
New York City parents are pushing back on a move to shift responsibility for hiring judges who handle special-education complaints from the state Education Department to the city’s administrative court system.
Four undocumented immigrants aided investigators after the worst New York City subway attack in decades. Will that be enough to persuade immigration authorities to give them visas or asylum?
The median pay package for chief executives of the biggest U.S. companies reached $14.7 million in 2021, setting a sixth-straight annual record as strong profits and robust markets boosted performance measures.
Chief executives at Capital Region public companies raked in more than $129 million in total compensation in 2021, according to filings the companies made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Three major Capital Region hospitals are warning that if you need the their emergency departments, longer waits may be expected.
With no local school district proposing to exceed the tax cap, budgets have a 99 percent chance of passing when voters cast ballots tomorrow, according to the New York State School Boards Association.
The Emma Willard School last week launched a $175 million capital campaign called Infinite Horizon: The Campaign for Emma Willard School.
In the last decade, thousands of new registered Democrats have emerged in one of New York’s fastest-growing counties — Saratoga. But they’re not voting.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany has added an 85-year-old retired priest to its list of about 50 credibly accused clergy “after an extensive investigation.”
A special law enforcement team was called in Friday to quell a riot among 12 people incarcerated at the Albany County jail who complained they weren’t getting enough linens and who demanded that a correctional officer be removed from their tier.
As it fights a war against Russia it did not provoke, Ukraine earned a symbolic victory, winning the annual Eurovision Song Contest.
The 2022 Billboard Music Awards took place in Las Vegas.
