Good Monday morning.Happy Halloween.
I ever so briefly considered not doing a full post on this pseudo holiday, given all the cyber ink I spilled on the lead-up to it last week. But I selfishly didn’t want to cheat myself out of the coup de grace of the experience.
Also, this is about as close to celebrating as I’m going to get, because we live on a quiet cul-de-sac where no sane trick-or-treater – or their parents – would bother to tread, because 1) there are no streetlights to speak of, and 2) there are barely enough houses to make it worth your while.
Our old suburban address was adjacent to one of those hyper Halloween ‘hoods where parents basically drive up and unload their costumed brood and let them run amok. We usually didn’t get many visitors ourselves, however. I guess the two blocks without sidewalks between our street and the heavy-hit ones was enough to dissuade most folks from making the trek.
I got out of the habit of buying candy because I always ended up throwing it away. But then last year, while I was working in the home office at about 4:30 p.m. or so, the doorbell started ringing. And it didn’t stop.
I got hit fairly hard by the early bird younger set. Very cute. Trouble was, I didn’t have anything in the house to give them except my stash of full-size Kind bars, which I ran through pretty fast (very popular with both kids AND parents, as it turns out). I ended up scrounging around for all the protein bars I could locate and just throwing them in a bowl on the stoop.
Hey, they’re sweet, and chocolate covered….it’s kind of like candy, right? And bonus! They’re low in fat and help you build muscle.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I took a lot of heat for this approach from my sugar-loving spouse. But you know what? Those bars were all gone by the time we went to bed. And no one egged the house OR the cars parked outside it.
At least I wasn’t giving out stickers or toothbrushes.
Of course, back in my day – you know, when we walked uphill both ways to school, barefoot and carrying our lunches in tin pails – people used to bake treats and make popcorn balls and invite you in for hot cider on Halloween night.
No one worried about tampering with candy (more or less an urban legend) or, perhaps more worrisome, edibles masquerading as candy. Ah, those were the days.
Anyway, enough with the reminiscing. On to the history.
Halloween can trace its roots back to the Celtic festival of Samhain – pronounced “sow-win”, despite the way it looks.
Samhain was a pagan celebration held to welcome the fall harvest, during which it was customary to light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. It was believed that on that day, the souls of the dead returned to their homes. Food was also placed out in hopes of placating any angry – or hungry spirits.
You can see where the whole “give me candy to spare me from soaping your house, egging your car, or toilet-papering your trees” tradition came from.
In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated Nov. 1 as a time to honor saints, and All Saints Day eventually adopted some of the Samhain traditions. The night BEFORE All Saints Day was All Hallows Eve, which later morphed into, Halloween.
By the time the ninth century rolled around, it become traditional for poor people to visit the houses of wealthier families, who doled out pastries called soul cakes in exchange for a promise by the recipient to pray for the souls of the homeowners’ dead relatives.
This practice was known as “souling,” and it eventually was adopted by kids, who would go from door to door seeking gifts of money, food, and/or drink. This was known as “guising” in Ireland and Scotland, and involved young people dressed in costumes knocking on doors and offering “tricks” in the form of songs or jokes in exchange for a treat of coins, nuts, or fruit.
Immigrants revived this tradition in the U.S., but, true to form, we had to go and ruin things by making it all about the pranks, which sometimes took a violent turn. Sugar rationing during WW II curtailed the practice of trick-or-treating, but it came roaring back with the post-war baby boom, and Halloween today is a multibillion dollar industry.
According to the National Retail Federation, consumers spent $10.14 billion on Halloween in 2021. Halloween 2022 is expected to set new records for spending.
Again, I personally am not expecting to engage in any Halloween revelry, though for some reason the spouse thought three bags of mixed miniatures candy bars needed to be purchased – just to be on the safe side. One of them is already almost gone. I did not eat any of it. Mysterious.
It’s going to be fairly mild today, with mostly cloudy skies and temperatures in the low 60s. There’s a slight chance of showers in the late afternoon/early evening. An umbrella and some costume-protecting garbage bags might be briefly pressed into service.
In the headlines…
More than 150 people were killed and another 150 injured after they were crushed in a large Halloween crowd in Seoul on Saturday night, the city’s fire department said, in one of the deadliest peacetime accidents in South Korea’s recent history.
As portraits emerged of the 154 people who died in the crowd surge, the losses cut deeper because so many were young people on the cusp of a new chapter. More than 100 of those killed were in their 20s. Five were in high school, and one in middle school.
Two American college students, both 20, were identified as among those who were trampled to death in the Seoul stampede.
The tragedy and questions about the authorities’ responsibility to manage the crowd, has marred the image of a thriving technology and pop-culture powerhouse that is chronically prone to man-made disasters.
A man broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California home and severely beat her husband, Paul, 82, with a hammer.
Those who have known the suspect describe an individual who seemed to fall into isolation and deeply troubling thoughts.
David DePape, 42, who was arrested at the Pelosi home, appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online, including some that questioned the results of the 2020 election, defended former President Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.
Police said Friday evening the attack on Paul Pelosi was “intentional.” DePape allegedly asked “Where is Nancy?” before his assault.
DePape is expected to be charged with multiple felonies tomorrow, according San Francisco law enforcement officials. He is expected to be arraigned on Tuesday.
Pelosi visited her husband in the hospital yesterday. She has said little since the attack, but wrote to her colleagues in a letter Saturday that “our children, our grandchildren and I are heartbroken and traumatized by the life-threatening attack on our Pop.
The attack on Pelosi’s husband, which appeared to target her, came after more than a decade of Republican efforts to demonize and dehumanize the most powerful woman in Washington.
President Joe BIden called the attack on Paul Pelosi “despicable” and suggested it was a natural progression from lies Republicans have spread about the 2020 election.
Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida decried the assault on Paul Pelosi, though another member of his party defended his own violent language about the Democratic House leader.
The attack revealed the vulnerabilities in security around members of Congress and their families — even for a lawmaker as powerful and wealthy as the speaker, who has a security detail – as midterm campaigns reach their frenzied final push.
Biden returned to his home state of Delaware to cast his ballot for the midterm election on Saturday afternoon. He was joined by his 18-year-old granddaughter Natalie, a first-time voter.
House Democrats have unified as they fight to retain their fragile majority in next month’s midterms. But if they lose, as many election prognosticators predict they will, that unity will likely be short-lived.
GOP leaders have begun to equivocate about whether they would seek to impeach President Biden if they won a House majority, but pressure is building from those who have vowed to do so.
Almost two-thirds of Republicans are worried that the results from next month’s midterm elections could be manipulated, according to a new USA Today/ Suffolk University poll.
Voters in Brazil yesterday ousted President Jair Bolsonaro after just one term and elected the leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to replace him, election officials said, a rebuke to Bolsonaro’s far-right movement and his divisive four years in office.
Biden congratulated da Silva on his election as president of Brazil, following what he labeled “free, fair, and credible elections” in the country.
In the first two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, legal abortions nationwide declined by more than 10,000, a drop of about 6 percent, according to the first attempt at a nationwide count of abortions since the decision.
In states where abortion remained legal, the number of abortions increased by roughly 12,000, or 11 percent. That suggests that around half of women who were unable to get abortions in states with bans traveled to another state to get one.
Workers have broken out of Apple’s largest iPhone assembly factory in China after a Covid outbreak forced staff to lockdown at the workplace.
China’s factory activity fell in October due to frequent Covid outbreaks, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
Italian doctors and nurses suspended from work because they are not vaccinated against Covid-19 will soon be reinstated, new Health Minister Orazio Schillaci said.
The Wuhan lab at the center of suspicions about the pandemic’s onset was far more troubled than known, documents unearthed by a Senate team reveal. Tracing the evidence, Vanity Fair and ProPublica give the clearest view yet of a biocomplex in crisis.
Before the Covid pandemic, most people caught respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) before the age of 2. Now things have changed.
New York City’s top public health official, Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan, has tested positive for a “quite mild” case of COVID-19.
A high-profile display of Republican and Democratic efforts illustrates how many of the state’s races have become unexpectedly close, including the governor’s race.
Lee Zeldin’s plan to tackle crime if elected governor of New York, which includes suspending state laws and rolling back criminal justice system reforms is being slammed by Democrats as nothing more than “political pandering” based on fearmongering.
Zeldin said that he’s gotten an earful from NYPD cops who are furious that their union donated $25,000 to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s campaign — while not giving the tough-on-crime candidate a cent in the tight race.
Hochul recruited former President Barack Obama to campaign for her on the radio.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday night that his state can be a model of what New York could be if Zeldin is elected governor.
E.J. Dionne Jr.: “There is a certain irony in the attacks on Hochul over crime because she anticipated the problem.”
Hochul campaigned on Long Island – Zeldin’s home turf – this weekend. Both she and Zeldin also campaigned in New York City, where the governor was joined by Mayor Eric Adams.
An Emerson College Polling-Pix11-The Hill poll released Friday found that the governor received 50 percent of support among very likely voters in the state, compared to Zeldin with 44 percent. A separate 4 percent said they were undecided.
The respected Cook Political Report changed its rating from “solid Democrat” to “likely Democrat” on Friday, acknowledging a closer-than-expected race that New York Dems are rushing to help save.
Zeldin’s campaign hesitated to immediately condemn two of his supporters brandishing signs inscribed with sexist slurs directed at Hochul at a Bronx get-out-the-vote rally for the Democratic incumbent Saturday.
Hochul has raised a record $49.2 million in her bid for a full term, but Zeldin has leveled the playing field as the opponents on Friday both reported having nearly $6 million in campaign cash as the race enters its final days.
Zeldin’s “amazing surge” has given him a “50/50” chance of unseating Hochul on Nov. 8, according to former Long Island GOP Rep. Peter King.
Hochul’s administration is being accused in a lawsuit of secretly slashing access to specialty doctors — and potentially life-saving medical treatment — for 1.2 million government workers and retirees.
New York’s Attorney General Letitia James is the only statewide incumbent who hasn’t agreed to a televised debate — and her GOP rival, Michael Henry, is crying foul.
New York has become a bellwether, election-wise, for both parties, with significant congressional seats in play and an increasingly close governor’s race.
Rep. Elise Stefanik’s efforts in New York — appearing at fund-raisers and news conferences statewide — are predicated on a belief that Rockefeller-era Republicanism, with moderate positions on social issues girded by fiscal and budgetary austerity, is over.
Stefanik is on the precipice of becoming one of the nation’s most powerful federal lawmakers. She first has to overcome a challenge for her seat by Matt Castelli, a former CIA intelligence officer and self-described moderate Democrat.
Two Republican candidates running for hotly contested New York congressional seats presided over pushes to reduce police pay in official posts they once held — a political stance that runs counter to broader GOP attacks against defunding of police.
Economic woes and the solutions to inflation headed a wide-ranging debate at Union College that is expected to be the sole exchange in the U.S. Senate race between longtime incumbent Sen. Chuck Schumer and his upstart GOP opponent Joe Pinion.
The challenger, a former anchor at right-wing outlet Newsmax, hurled a range of insults at Schumer throughout the hourlong debate held at Union College in Schenectady. “He is a failed senator. He has failed the people of this state,” Pinion said.
New York elected officials rarely embrace positions that could antagonize Hasidic leaders, who typically encourage their community to vote as a unified bloc.
Dozens of “equity entrepreneurs” in New York and New Jersey are urging Schumer to seek passage of a bill that would allow banks to service licensed cannabis businesses without fear of federal penalty.
Free access to cannabis industry booths and state regulators drew hundreds to the Albany Capital Center this past weekend, while paid admission bought added workshops and panels
A change in New York law through passage of the Less is More Act has made it tougher to put parolees back behind bars when they are accused of a new crime, critics say.
A new city law going into effect tomorrow will require companies with at least four employees to post salary ranges for openings, even if the jobs involve remote or hybrid work.
The city has “fixed” more than 1,200 dangerous intersections so far this year, outpacing the 1,000-intersection target it set at the start of 2022, Adams said.
Streets across the five boroughs are packed, but Adams said he sees a way toward a car-free future in New York City.
The New York City Mayor’s Office of Operations issued a report claiming that only 2% of the city’s streets are “filthy,” baffling residents of the Big Apple.
New York City is pledging billions of dollars to make public schools greener. Over the next decade, 100 schools will be retrofitted from oil to electric heating thanks to the historic investment.
Former NYC Transit president Sarah Feinberg was assaulted on a Manhattan street corner in a random and unprovoked attack, police said Friday.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has released a report with a series of recommendations to better serve the transgender, gender-nonconforming and nonbinary community in New York City and across the country.
New York City and New York State have agreed to pay $36 million to settle lawsuits filed on behalf of two men who were wrongfully convicted and spent decades in prison for the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, their lawyer said.
The two men, Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam, each spent more than 20 years in prison after their hasty arrests and a trial that relied on questionable evidence in one of the most notorious murders of the civil rights era.
A trial in the Bronx — postponed in 2019 and again in 2021 — is expected to start today in a lawsuit brought by five human rights activists who allege they were roughed up outside Trump Tower.
Workers at a Trader Joe’s store in Brooklyn have voted against unionizing, handing a union its first loss at the company after two victories this year.
Three little kids and a young dad died in a raging Bronx house fire early yesterday, as the terrified children desperately banged on the windows crying and screaming “Help me, God!” shaken neighbors and authorities said.
Why on earth would anyone do this job?
The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, the Harlem preacher whose talent for oratory and political savvy was a force for social and racial justice, and who raised $1 billion to remake America’s most storied and influential Black neighborhoods, died at his Harlem home at 73.
Parishioners of Abyssinian Baptist Church gathered for a special service to honor Butts, whose death hit hard in Harlem, especially among the church’s mostly Black congregation, and the sermon addressed congregants’ collective grief.
Forget the conventional image you might have of an FBI agent. The bureau wants to recruit its next generation of agents from a wider pool of applicants to diversify its ranks in an effort that includes its Albany field office.
The state Office of Court Administration is looking into how court files were scattered along Charlton Road outside the Ballston Town Court.
One of the Spa City’s most palatial residential properties is poised to welcome a new owner. The owners of “Palazzo Riggi” entered into a sales contract with a buyer on Saturday and set a proposed closing date of Dec. 7.
The fledgling Amazon Labor Union has filed objections over an Oct. 19 unionization vote in Schodack that it lost by a two-to-one margin, contending the company unfairly pressured employees to vote “no.”
Police say they have arrested a suspect in connection to disturbing images, appearing to support white supremacist ideology that have been found on the UAlbany campus.
A 24-year-old Gilboa man was charged with first-degree aggravated harassment, a felony, on Friday. The suspect was arraigned at Albany City Court and has no connection to the school.
Rev. Kenneth Doyle, who served the community variously as pastor at Albany’s Roman Catholic Mater Christi Church and board chair of the Albany County Airport Authority, died Friday at age 82, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.
Salina Town Justice Andrew Piraino, 68, recently took home $3 million from a scratch-off lottery ticket.
