Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to a band-new month.
The race to the holiday season is officially upon us, though I’ve been seeing both Thanksgiving and Christmas-themed items in stores for a few weeks now. Nothing like getting an early jump on things.
Here at CivMix, we are not quite ready to let go of the spooky theme and move on to the big meal and the tree and the lights and all that. Thankfully, we don’t have to.
Today is Día de los Muertos, more commonly known as Day of the Dead, a holiday in which Indigenous and Catholic traditions blend to honor those who have shaken off this mortal coil and passed on to things unknown. The idea is that the souls of the dead return to Earth for a few days to share with the living.
Technically, this is a multi-day celebration, and the line-up of day-to-day remembrance is as follows:
Oct. 28: Souls of who died suddenly or because of an accident.
Oct. 29: Souls of those who drowned.
Oct. 30: Souls of those who have been forgotten.
Oct. 31: Souls of those who are in limbo.
Nov. 1: Souls of “Little Angels” (Children).
Nov. 2: Adult souls.
According to tradition, the gates of heaven open for a short period and spirits can rejoin their friends and families. Though this seems like it could be very sombre, it is a happy, and not sad, occasion.
Day of the Dead is primarily celebrated in Mexico and also in cities like New York and LA that have large Latino populations.
Traditions include setting up temporary memorial spaces known as ofrendas – both public and private – to commemorate the dead. All ofrendas incorporate the four elements: water, wind, earth and fire.
Offerings might vary from a departed loved one’s favorite things/foods/drink, to cempasúchil flowers (marigolds), paper cut-outs, candles (so spirits can find their way), salt, water, chocolate, sugar skulls, and pan de muerto (bread of the dead).
Skeletons are central to Day of the Dead celebrations, symbolizing the return of the bones to the living world.
The roots of the Day of the Dead date back at least 3,000 years to the rituals established in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. The Aztecs and other Nahua people in what is now central Mexico saw death as an integral, ever-present part of life. They believed it took a long time – years – for a soul to travel from Earth to the Land of the Dead (Chicunamictlán), and so they provided tools, food and drink to help sustain the souls on this arduous journey.
UNESCO declared Día de los Muertos an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. But the holiday probably wasn’t on many radar screens here in the U.S. until the Pixar/Walt Disney movie “Coco” was released in November 2017 and became a massive cultural phenomenon, grossing more than $800 million worldwide.
I’m looking ahead and WTF upstate??? The weather is off the hook. Mid-to-high 60s into the 70s again this coming weekend??? I mean, I’m not complaining, really, but it IS disconcertingly off-brand for late fall.
But, not to worry, looks like we’ll be back into the 50s and even the high 40s next week. Phew. As for today, expect cloudy skies with a slight chance of a rain shower and the aforementioned unseasonably high temps.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden threatened to pursue higher taxes on oil company profits if industry giants do not work to cut gas prices.
Biden escalated weeks of warnings to energy producers by floating a “windfall” tax on their corporate profits, calling out major gas companies for racking up gains from a spike in prices he attributes to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Biden reportedly lost his temper with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in June phone call when Ukrainian leader asked for more aid.
Administration officials said Biden and Zelenskyy’s relationship has only improved since the June phone call, after which Zelenskyy made a statement praising the U.S. for its generous assistance.
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel sidestepped a question about whether she regrets mocking Biden and Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman for their speaking abilities.
Biden is steering clear of some presidential battleground states with pivotal Senate and gubernatorial races, as his low approval ratings and voter frustration over the economy weigh on his party ahead of the November midterm elections
Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden arrived in New York City yesterday morning to attend a memorial service for the late father of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The Bidens doled out Halloween candy to trick-or-treaters dressed up as everything from Spider-Man to a flamingo to a monk to a zombie founding father at a soggy celebration on the south side of the White House.
The San Francisco district attorney announced an attempted murder charge for the man accused of violently attacking Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the couple’s California home last week.
The right-wing extremist who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, David DePape, admitted he planned to kidnap the speaker and break her kneecaps to send a message to liberal Democrats in Congress, authorities said.
DePape was looking for Nancy Pelosi, who was in Washington at the time, to interrogate the speaker on an unspecified political matter, according to the federal complaint.
In the days since Paul Pelosi, 82, was attacked by an intruder asking, “Where is Nancy?”, a litany of Republicans and conservatives have spread baseless conspiracy theories about the assault and its motives.
Former President Donald Trump condemned the violence that targeted Speaker Pelosi while his namesake tweeted tasteless jokes about the hammer attack.
Trump’s family real estate company offered employee benefits that were so lucrative they classified as crimes — so it kept the details in two sets of books, prosecutors told a Manhattan jury during opening arguments of the long-awaited tax fraud trial.
The criminal tax fraud trial of Trump’s family business kicked off with the prosecution and the defense each taking aim at a different man. For the prosecutors, it was Trump. For the defense, it was Allen H. Weisselberg, the loyal chief financial officer.
The Trump Companies’ defense team includes a personal injury lawyer from Philadelphia and two New York criminal lawyers who have defended mobsters and white collar defendants.
Trump asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the long-running dispute over whether a House committee can obtain access to his tax returns.
In a 31-page filing, Trump’s lawyers asked the chief justice to freeze matters while they prepare to formally appeal a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling, which held the House Ways and Means Committee had a right to see his returns.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by Mark Meadows, the final chief of staff for Trump, that sought to block two subpoenas from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, including one to Verizon for Meadows’s phone and text data.
By the end of five hours of vigorous and sometimes testy arguments, a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared ready to reconsider decades of precedents and to rule that the programs were unlawful.
Liberal justices stressed the significance of diversity throughout society while conservatives argued against classifying individuals by race.
Shanghai’s Disney Resort abruptly suspended operations to comply with Covid-19 prevention measures, with all visitors at the time of the announcement directed to stay in the park until they return a negative test for the virus.
“We will notify guests as soon as we have a confirmed date to resume operations,” the park said in a statement. The two hotels at the resort will remain open.
Travelers visiting Qatar will no longer need a negative PCR or rapid antigen test to enter the country. The latest relaxation of COVID-related measures take effect today – just 19 days before the World Cup kicks off.
The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rochelle Walensky, experienced a COVID-19 rebound after completing a course of Pfizer COVID-19 pill, the agency said.
Walensky is again in isolation, working and holding virtual meetings, the CDC said.
The Scripps Research team demonstrated that a variant of an existing FDA-approved treatment for neurological disorders may prevent COVID-19 infection in animals.
Unlike a number of other countries, the US does not yet have a nasal Covid vaccine.
A raft of nasal sprays have been proposed to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection. The sprays would be fast-acting and would be applied frequently, perhaps once or twice a day, to the site where the virus first takes hold — the nasal lining and throat.
About 128,000 New York City voters cast ballots in the first three days of early voting for the Nov. 8 election, the city Board of Elections reported yesterday, as the governor’s race kicked into high gear.
Emotion and passion ruled yesterday as Gov. Kathy Hochul and Republican challenger Lee Zeldin were on the hunt for votes. Eight days before Election Day, the rhetoric was sharp and the attacks were personal.
Zeldin held a campaign rally with Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, while Hochul appeared with a pair of Black and Latino Democratic lawmakers: Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Adriano Espaillat.
Seeing the parallels to his own stunning victory last year, Youngkin was in New York to “pass the baton” to surging fellow Republican Zeldin.
Hochul joined Adams to amp up voters in the Democratic stronghold of southeast Queens on Sunday, after polls showed worrying signs about New York City voter turnout in the tight race.
Mark Penn, pollster for Bill and Hillary Clinton, explains why – and how – Zeldin might pull off an upset victory next week.
Democratic strategist Camille Rivera, meanwhile, believes Hochul will win, insisting: “(F)or those of us who have worked in politics and campaigns for a long time, a bounce in Republican polling was to be expected.”
“‘Has Lee Zeldin persuaded upstaters that Hochul is a traitor to her home region?’ If so, he may have a clear shot at upsetting her.”
Hochul has insisted that Democratic-led cities are safer than those located in Republican-led states thanks to the restrictions on guns.
“They have this conspiracy going across America to convince people that Democratic states are not as safe,” Hochul said of Republicans. “Guess what? They are also not only election deniers, they are data deniers.”
Some Democrats say the party has taken New York for granted for so long that they’ve focused too much on primaries and forgotten how to run against Republicans in their own state.
The Democratic Governors Association has created a super PAC in New York to boost Hochul – a sign of the party’s growing fears that a late-stage surge by Zeldin could result in an upset in the blue state.
Monroe County town supervisors signed a bipartisan letter to Hochul asking for help addressing crime.
New York City voters have four ballot proposals to decide on next week: a statewide proposal that would boost spending in Albany on future environment-related projects plus three city proposals.
New York is poised to be the first state in America to adopt right-to-repair legislation, but only if Hochul signs it into law.
Incumbent New York Attorney General Letitia James officially refused to debate her Republican opponent, Michael Henry, before the Nov. 8 election.
House Democrats’ top super PAC is making a last-minute buy to aid Rep. Joe Morelle, a New York Democrat in a deep-blue seat — the latest sign that the battle for the House is lurching toward the GOP.
Retiring GOP Rep. John Katko’s open seat in the 22nd District represents a rare chance for Democrats — who are all-in on trying to protect their majority in Congress — to win a Republican-held seat.
Mayor Eric Adams is giving employee unions and the City Council an ultimatum, aiming to end a standoff over retirees’ health insurance that could cost the city budget billions.
Adams’ administration is considering slapping health insurance premiums on active municipal employees if its controversial effort to shift the city’s retired workforce into a privatized Medicare plan falls apart.
During his eight-year tenure as Brooklyn borough president, Adams repeatedly declared that the city’s expanding ferry system should include the majority Black neighborhood of Canarsie, but he hasn’t done anything as mayor about that yet.
Adams yesterday went on a walking tour of the area slated for the development of Innovation QNS, the largest proposed development in the history of Queens.
A 26-year-old man held at the troubled Rikers Island jail complex died yesterday — the 18th such death in 2022 — exactly three years to the day from the start of his pretrial detention in the city jails.
A city correction officer at the Rikers Island prison complex was seriously injured when a detainee stabbed him more than a dozen times in the back of the head, the correction officers’ union said in a statement.
The head of the city’s transit system claimed that the boost in cops on subways is already combating crime underground, with arrests nearly doubling in the past week alone.
New York City public schools seeing an influx of migrant students will receive an extra $12 million in funding, education officials announced minutes before a protest over the agency’s handling of the crisis.
Nnenna Lynch seems like a perfect candidate to lead the organization that puts on the New York City Marathon — except for a failed drug test and Road Runners’ zero-tolerance policy.
A record number of homebuyers want to decamp to new metro areas — with New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles leading the charge, according to a report from real estate site Redfin.
A company owned by actor and comedian Jim Belushi has been awarded the latest license to operate a dispensary selling recreational marijuana on Northern New York’s Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe territory.
Town police are investigating the death of a 19-year-old died last week at the Capital District Juvenile Secure Detention Facility.
A Colonie-based military vendor will pay a $75,000 fine to settle allegations that it sold counterfeit batteries to the Defense Logistics Agency, which manages supplies for various branches of the U.S. armed forces.
Elon Musk’s rapid transformation of Twitter continued yesterday after he fired the social media company’s board of directors and named himself “sole director.” The personnel moves were announced in an SEC filing.
Delta Air Lines pilots overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike if a new contract agreement with the carrier is not reached.
