Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to a four-day workweek…unless you took the whole week off, in which case, good for you.
I hope that you spent some time over the three-day holiday weekend recharging without your phone, though I follow a number of you on social media and I know you documented all your doings – lake days and pool days and cookouts and hikes.
As much as I enjoy seeing what everyone else has going on and sharing what’s up on my end, there is a sort of tyranny of documentation and hyper connectivity associated with recording and reporting on one’s life without actually being fully present to live it.
Don’t get me wrong, our lives have been changed for the better in so many ways by wireless communication, but there are drawbacks – not the least of which is the possibility of having your identity stolen – or, at the very least, your bank/charge card, which has happened to me on too many occasions to count now, and is a huge pain in the ass.
Who’s responsible for our modern cyberlifestyle? Well, you could blame a guy named Dr. Mahlon Loomis, a pretty innocuous name for an individual who monumentally changed the trajectory of the world.
Loomis has New York cred – he was born in Fulton County in 1826, specifically a place called Oppenheim that I confess I had no idea existed until I started researching this post. About a dozen years later, the Loomis family relocated to Springfield, Virginia, not far from Washington, D.C. Mahlon
Loomis bounced around a bit while studying dentistry and teaching to make ends meet. He did a stint in Ohio, and another in Massachusetts, before marrying and relocating back to the south, where he settled in Lynchburg, Virginia and worked for Piedmont Manganese Co. as a mineralogist.
Loomis was a tinkerer with several patents to his name – including one for a set of porcelain false teeth and another for a convertible suitcase.
Somehow, he got interested in wireless telegraphy – the use of coded signals to communicate information between two distant points. Does this sound familiar? Yeah, it’s basically how the internet works.
Loomis conducted experiments in the Blue Ridge Mountains, including one in 1866 that involved two kites, a vertical antenna, a high frequency detector, and a spark gap transmitter.
The result, in which the two kites “spoke” to one another, was the first known instance of wireless aerial communication.
Loomis tried without success to secure funding from the federal government to further his research and make it practical. Why not? They gave taxpayer funds to Samuel B. Morse, after all.
The “Loomis Aerial Telegraph Bill” sought incorporation for the Loomis Aerial Telegraph Company and $50,000 (a rather sizable sum for the time) to underwrite the inventor’s work. In the end, a version of the bill, while passed and signed into law by President Grant, didn’t do all that much for Loomis, but it did help him make the case for securing a patent in 1872.
Sadly, Loomis doesn’t get the credit he deserves. He’s far less well known than Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 1909 in recognition for his contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.
Today, if you hadn’t already guessed it, is Loomis Day, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. It’s neither his birthday nor the anniversary of his death, nor is it the date his patent was awarded.
It looks like spring is officially over and we are vaulting directly into the heat of summer – such is life in upstate New York. Hopefully, we can figure out the pool situation and get it open soon, because we’re looking at a stretch of 80-degree days and even some days reaching into the 90s as the week wears on.
It will be in the low 80s and sunny today – just the perfect type of weather for…returning to work.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden implored the nation to “never forget the price that was paid to protect our democracy” as he honored fallen soldiers during Memorial Day remarks at National Arlington Cemetery.
“Our troops have fought for our democracy and, if necessary, died for it,” Biden said after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. “Today, their service and sacrifice and that of their families echoes far beyond those silent stones out there.”
“We must never forget the price that was paid to protect our democracy,” Biden said later in an address at the Memorial Amphitheater. “We must never forget the lives these flags, flowers and marble markers represent.”
Four children – including a 1-year-old – were among nine people shot and wounded when gunfire erupted near a popular Florida beach packed with Memorial Day revelers, authorities said.
Cops were still responding into the evening after two groups clashed, leading to gunfire. One person had been detained and another was being sought. There were no reports of deaths.
The details of a debt ceiling deal between Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy were released Sunday in the form of a 99-page bill that would suspend the nation’s debt limit through 2025 to avoid a federal default while limiting government spending.
The 99-page Fiscal Responsibility Act will need to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate before the June 5 deadline set by the Treasury Department to act or risk default.
McCarthy said the House will vote on the legislation tomorrow, giving the Senate time to consider it before June 5, the date when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the United States could default on its debt obligations if lawmakers did not act in time.
Biden and McCarthy may have reached a debt ceiling deal, but now they have the even harder task of trying to convince everyone else to swallow what one Republican, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, described as a “turd sandwich.”
Biden spent part of the Memorial Day holiday working the phones, calling lawmakers in both parties, as the president does his part to deliver the votes.
Biden condemned Uganda’s anti-gay law, calling for its immediate repeal and the possibility of implementing sanctions.
“The enactment of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act is a tragic violation of universal human rights — one that is not worthy of the Ugandan people, and one that jeopardizes the prospects of critical economic growth for the entire country,” Biden said.
Biden and his wife, Jill, were on hand Sunday to watch granddaughter Natalie Biden graduate from high school, the White House said. Natalie is the daughter of the president’s late son, Beau.
Biden and his campaign team continue to believe that they will square off against Donald Trump in a general election rematch of four years prior. But as the GOP field grows, they’re also not leaving anything to chance.
The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote.
When asked for comment on presidents pardoning Trump after DeSantis suggested he could do just that, Biden laughed.
To win re-election, Biden plans to tap an expansive stable of friends and allies to go where he can’t, say what he won’t and be what he’ll never be.
Trump on Saturday gave his full backing to Ken Paxton as the Texas attorney general faced historic impeachment proceedings led by state Republicans.
Prosecutors in New York have informed attorneys for Trump that the evidence in their hush money case against the former president includes an audio recording of him and a witness, a court filing made public Friday shows.
Trump was spotted in New York City on Memorial Day — flashing a wave as he emerged from his Trump Tower residence to go and play golf.
Although Gov. Kathy Hochul says she has taken no role in matters directly affecting Delaware North, the company stood to benefit from her administration’s decisions since she took office.
Hochul’s hope of finding a way to speed up the process for legal employment of the surge of asylum-seekers and other migrants newly arriving in New York has a strong ally in the restaurant industry.
Hochul commemorated Memorial Day by speaking at the newly established New York State Veterans Cemetery – Finger Lakes in Romulus.
Lawmakers in New York may pass the Clean Slate Act, which would seal criminal records for those who finish their sentences and stay out of trouble for several years.
Not everyone is paying tolls on New York’s highways, and in many cases the state Thruway Authority has failed to collect, according to an audit released Friday by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
As of March, a collection agency for the Thruway Authority is seeking $276.3 million in unpaid tolls, according to the audit, which monitored the Thruway Authority from January 2019 to January 2023.
Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell ate crow Memorial Day weekend after getting roasted for telling a female colleague to “grow a pair, honey” at a committee hearing last week.
Mayor Eric Adams denounced left-wing ideologies in an ultra-patriotic Memorial Day speech in which he also lamented a perceived lack of national pride among young Americans.
Speaking at the USS Intrepid Museum’s annual Memorial Day ceremony, the mayor made the critical comments after referencing a Thomas Jefferson quote about the “tree of liberty,” which is commonly interpreted as being about military struggle.
Adams has slammed a CUNY law graduate for her ‘negativity and divisiveness’ after she incited anger and slammed ‘fascist’ cops and military in the US.
Adams on Friday named Ana Almanzar, a nonprofit health executive and former Cuomo administration official, as the new deputy mayor of strategic initiatives.
Adams denied that raising taxes to help the Big Apple cover the cost of its rising expenses, including the migrant crisis, was an option — despite city Comptroller Brad Lander calling for “new revenues,” aka tax hikes, to be brought in.
More than 1,000 beds and several hundred family units run by the Department of Homeless Services sat empty last week as Adams began court proceedings to suspend the city’s 40-year-old right-to-shelter law due to a city “overextended” by new migrants.
New York City will conduct a sweeping new study on the impact hybrid work has on transportation and the economy following “long-term shifts” in travel patterns first triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A year after a global mpox outbreak and just as Pride celebrations and the summer party season are set to start, public health authorities are warning of a risk of new outbreaks, nationally and in New York City, primarily among men who have sex with men.
Despite pay increases and efforts to simplify the notoriously difficult swim test, New York’s lifeguard shortage is dire. The city says the lifeguard unions are partly to blame.
The executive director of the New York-based Asian American Federation says the community is facing a mental health crisis.
The mother of a 6-year-old girl who died Friday after the police found her bruised and unconscious in a Bronx apartment has been charged with endangering the welfare of her two surviving children, the police said.
The police arrested the parents of a 3-month-old girl who was found dead in the woods near a Bronx highway Sunday night. The baby, whom the police identified as Genevieve Comager, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The father of a 3-month-old girl who was found dead in a trash-strewn wooded area in The Bronx was turned in by his own dad — after allegedly confessing that he panicked when he discovered his daughter “stiff” and “cold” in her bed.
Programming snafus, pivoting priorities and management turnover has derailed the MTA’s $645 million OMNY fare system, which is now years late and will cost another $130 million over budget, sources say and documents show.
The New York City Council’s Italian-American caucus has filed a formal complaint with the lawmaking body’s Standards and Ethics Committee over remarks made by Councilman Chi Ossé that they claim are bigoted.
Forty asylum seekers were settled into an Albany hotel yesterday after arriving the night before, while the town of Colonie won a temporary court order to prevent any more migrants from being sent to the town.
“They’re saying there’s probably going to be another bus of 150 coming up and it’s alarming because we want to do this right,” County Executive Dan McCoy said after several dozen migrants arrived in Albany.
“While we suggested several other hotels within the City of Albany, New York City has decided to contract with the Ramada Inn on Watervliet Avenue in Albany,” Mayor Kathy Sheehan, a Democrat, said in a statement.
Sheehan pledged that Albany’s community partners would “work to ensure New York City provides these asylum seekers with food, shelter, everyday necessities, and the services they may need.”
They were transported to the region by bus and housed in the Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Albany on Watervliet Avenue a day after about 25 men were sent by New York City to the SureStay Plus Hotel by Best Western on Wolf Road in Colonie.
The now-shuttered Red Carpet Inn on Albany’s Northern Boulevard may be demolished to make way for 184 affordable apartments.
Birdwatcher Christian Cooper is set to premiere a TV show on National Geographic featuring his travels across the US — leaving behind an ugly 2020 “Central Park Karen” fiasco that dragged him into an unwanted spotlight.
HGTV is selling the “Brady Bunch” house for $5.5 million. The home improvement network bought the home in 2018 for $3.5 million and quickly launched a miniseries, “A Very Brady Renovation,” to transform it.
