Good Monday morning. A brand-new month is upon us.
It also happens to be National Poetry Month, which was created in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets to, as the website puts it, commemorates poets’ integral role in our culture and remind us all that poetry matters. Apparently, it has grown to become the world’s largest literary celebration.
And so without further ado, here’s a few lines to kick things off:
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain
-T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland”
Actually, when Eliot wrote this, he wasn’t really trying to give April itself a bad name. April isn’t inherently bad.
In fact, since it’s the month when spring seems to finally take hold, one might say that it’s kind of uplifting, It also plays host to a trio of holidays – Ramadan, Passover, and Easter – which are about rebirth and renewal and, well, more or less joy.
Eliot wrote that poem in the wake of the last global pandemic – the Spanish Flu – which both he and his wife came down with in December of 1918. Much of this piece he penned during his recovery.
Remember, as many as one hundred million people died of the Spanish Flu between 1918 and 1920. (By contrast, Covid-19 has killed an estimated 6.8 million, and counting, though that number is probably far higher due to chronic underreporting in some countries).
But back to April. Perhaps it would be more uplifting, and befitting of this month, which ushers in all sorts of good things – warmer weather, green grass, flowers, allergy season.
OK, so that last one is perhaps not so great. I have luckily never suffered from allergies myself, but I know people who do and it seems miserable.
Anyway, as for April showers bringing May flowers, this piece of poetry is attributed to a man named Thomas Tusser, who lived in England in the 1500s. He actually wrote something along the lines of: “Sweet April showers do spring May Flowers” – or, more specifically, for the time: “Swéete April showers, Doo spring Maie flowers.”
This was a couplet in a much larger instructional poem called “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry.” He also wrote on other rather mundane everyday topics such as Christmas and thriftiness and gardening (he was a farmer as well as a poet).
The weather we experienced this past weekend was a perfect example of the schizophrenic nature of spring in Upstate New York. Saturday morning poured like crazy and then cleared up to be fantastic, with blue skies and temperatures in the 70s, only to swing back into a severe thunderstorm watch that had everyone who was out enjoying the sun dashing for cover.
Sunday? Back to the 40s, with wind – a lot of wind – though the skies were clear. And today we’ll be bouncing back into the 60s, with partly cloudy skies and another chance of a shower or two. More rain. These flowers better appreciate it and show up when the time is right.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden is making a stop in the Twin Cities today, visiting a power generation business the White House says will be key in the future of green energy.
Biden reaffirmed the federal government’s commitment to the people of Mississippi, announcing that the administration will cover the full cost of the state’s emergency response to the deadly tornado-spawning storms that hit the southeast US last week.
Biden declared early yesterday morning that major disaster exists in Arkansas, ordering federal aid to help state and local areas recover from the severe weather on Friday, March 31.
After a storm system tore through parts of at least seven states on Friday and Saturday, forecasters said tornadoes, hail and strong winds are now possible on Tuesday in the South and Midwest.
Biden made a visit to the University of Pennsylvania Saturday afternoon. The president and first lady, Jill Biden, attended his granddaughter Maisy Biden’s senior art show.
King Charles’s upcoming May 6 Coronation will be swimming with world leaders and dignitaries, but it has emerged that the U.S. president will not be among them.
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said that criticism of his apparent 180 on the Inflation Reduction Act is “ridiculous.”
Manchin issued a scathing statement Friday after the Biden administration issued rules governing which electric vehicles (EV) are eligible for tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Biden has all but announced he’s running for reelection, but key questions about the 2024 campaign are unresolved: Who will manage it? Where will it be based? When will he finally make it official?
Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson may be making gains against Biden ahead of the 2024 election, a new poll suggests.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed his Russian counterpart for the release of recently detained WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich in a phone call yesterday, the State Department said, following his detention last week on espionage charges.
Four months after her release from Russian prison, WNBA star Brittney Griner and her wife Cherelle called on Biden to push for Gershkovich’s release.
The coordinator of the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response team called on doctors to take a leadership role with patients to battle medical misinformation and disinformation, linking the continuing death toll in part to such erroneous messaging.
The World Health Organization has its eye on a new COVID variant thought to be driving a new surge of cases in India—at a time when reported cases are down in much of the rest of the world.
If a single person ever catches SARS and MERS at the same time through neighboring receptors and the two viruses combine, we could have a whole new pandemic on our hands—one that could be far worse than the current COVID-19 pandemic.
U.S. states on Saturday started to kick as many as 15 million people off Medicaid insurance, as an emergency safety net put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic comes to a gradual end.
Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, joined the race for the Republican nomination for president, banking that in a crowded field, enough G.O.P. voters will be searching for an outspoken critic of Donald Trump to lift his dark-horse candidacy.
The Justice Department has obtained new evidence suggesting potential obstruction by Trump in the agency’s probe of his handling of classified documents, The Washington Post reported.
New York prosecutors, Trump, his political allies and foes are all gearing up for a historic week that will feature his surrender and arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom on hush-money charges.
Trump will take America through yet another grave and unprecedented national drama this week when he becomes the first ex-president to appear in court charged with a crime.
Trump is expected to arrive in New York today from his estate in Florida and head to his erstwhile home in Trump Tower, where he will likely stay the night there before heading to a courthouse in Lower Manhattan tomorrow.
Trump, the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges, is due to be arraigned, fingerprinted and photographed at the downtown Manhattan courthouse tomorrow. His lawyers have said he will enter a plea of not guilty.
“I will be leaving Mar-a-Lago on Monday at 12 noon, heading to Trump Tower in New York,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “On Tuesday morning I will be going to, believe it or not, the Courthouse. America was not supposed to be this way!”
New York City police have thrown up metal barriers around Trump Tower and blocked roads near Manhattan Criminal Courthouse as they brace for potential protests ahead of Trump’s expected surrender.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is planning a New York City trip to protest Trump’s indictment, the controversial congresswoman announced.
As Trump faces a possible criminal trial in Manhattan, state lawmakers yesterday stumped for proposed legislation that would make it easier for court proceedings to be recorded on video and streamed live.
Trump supporters rallied Saturday on Long Island at an event held by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination.
Trump’s booking photo may not be made public unless he decides to release it.
There was tension in the city as New Yorkers waited for Trump to appear, but in the meantime on Saturday night, Bruce kept playing at the Garden.
New York started a new fiscal year without a budget on Saturday as Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders kept slogging through conflicts over policies she aims to enact through the state’s spending plan.
If a budget isn’t approved by 4 p.m. today, it could also impact New York’s ability to pay more than 57,000 state workers unless lawmakers agree to a supplemental budget to bridge the gap as they have in previous years.
The high-stakes battle over New York State’s $200 billion-plus budget has been overtaken by a highly divisive issue that has become a political minefield in one of the nation’s most liberal states: public safety.
Lawmakers made for the exits Friday at the state Capitol as Hochul and legislative leaders prepared to blow past the midnight budget deadline and continue negotiations throughout the weekend.
Hochul launched a new pharmacy benefit program on April 1 called NYRx. The program is said to improve prescription drug access and coverage for the eight million New Yorkers enrolled in Medicaid statewide.
State Police do not know where this week’s widespread school shooting hoax calls came from, but it was “probably” from outside the U.S, Hochul said Friday.
Changing New York’s unique accounting method for greenhouse gas emissions has become an unexpected issue in state budget talks — sparking concern among environmental groups.
Should Hochul’s state budget for financial year 2024 come to pass, funds for the New York Council for the Arts will be slashed by $61.7 million.
Hochul is recognizing children who are separated from a parent on active duty. A new proclamation is declaring April as the Month of the Military Child.
Hochul is downplaying some private school leaders’ concerns about efforts to include language in the budget that would make it easier for nonpublic schools to be in compliance with state Education Department guidelines bolstered last year.
Democratic leadership in New York state government wants to begin making natural gas a thing of the past. However, the plans for getting there differ.
State Republican lawmakers are weighing taking legal action against Hochul’s proposal to change the process for selecting nominees to the Court of Appeals, including for chief judge.
Newly released tapes from the city’s administrative court offer a look into Mayor Eric Adams’ effort to fight tickets he received for a rat infestation outside his Brooklyn apartment building.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily News, Adams elaborated on how he perceives the almighty and explained that, to him, God is “rooted in this universal idea that there’s something larger than us that we lean into and have faith in.”
After working at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services for less than four months, former Brooklyn state Sen. Jesse Hamilton, an Adams ally, secured an unusual promotion late last year that came with a hefty salary bump.
A group headed by Andy King, a disgraced Bronx politician expelled from the City Council for allegedly mistreating staffers, is getting funding from the city Department of Education, records show.
New York State Attorney General Tish James will not be seeking criminal charges against two NYPD officers who shot and killed a Crown Heights man — and whose family said was suffering from a mental illness.
Nearly half of all drinking-and-driving offenses in Manhattan were tossed out of court last year – as dismissal rates soared over five times higher than they were before state lawmakers enacted a controversial evidence reform law in 2020, records show.
The head of the city Correction Department’s Investigation Division — a key unit that investigates a wide range of staff misconduct — has stepped down over questions about his handling of probes into excessive force cases.
A suspect in a domestic violence case died in police custody after cops found him unconscious in a Manhattan stationhouse holding cell, NYPD officials said.
Madison Square Garden illegally uses facial recognition technology to scare off potential litigants and keep their profit margin up — while violating the privacy of fans, a new class-action lawsuit claims.
Reports of some sexually transmitted infections among New Yorkers increased in 2021 compared to the year before, according to a report released on Friday by the city’s health department.
In the Bronx, a flower infamous for its rotting, putrid smell is set to come back to life at any moment. It’s called the “corpse flower” — otherwise known as titus-arum or amorphophallus titanum — and the New York Botanical Garden says it’s preparing to bloom.
A marijuana shop opened Friday morning on Schenectady’s Union Street, making its first sales and turning the surrounding shopping district into the latest focal point in New York’s legalization of cannabis sales.
After standing outside Albany’s City Hall for nearly a century, a statue of Gen. Philip Schuyler is set to come down in response to concerns about the Revolutionary War general being an enslaver. There might be a time capsule somewhere inside it.
A body that appeared to have been in the water for some time was found in the area of Niskayuna’s Lions Park Saturday afternoon.
As a requirement for the construction of the Costco Wholesale store at Crossgates Mall, a roundabout will be built where a traffic light currently stalls traffic coming off the Northway. The project will start today.
Albany officials said a person started the March 23 fire that destroyed the former Kenwood Academy — but they cannot determine if it was accidental or intentional. A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.
In the wake of the catastrophic blaze at the former Kenwood Academy, city historians and preservationists are again searching for ways to prevent other historic properties in the city from meeting a similar ruinous fate.
Facing a dramatic increase in opioid overdose deaths, Rensselaer County is holding a “Narcan Blitz” tomorrow to distribute the life-saving medical spray for free at five locations.
