Good morning. Friday has arrived, though it took its sweet time in getting here – at least for me.
I am a big reader, as you know. As an only child of academically inclined parents, who lived abroad a lot before the age of 12 or so, I didn’t really have much of a choice. I spent a lot of time entertaining myself. Books are a great way to do that.
I also wasn’t allowed to watch unlimited TV, which might have also contributed to my bookishness. A few hours of cartoons on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and I think an hour after homework on school nights. (Dad, keep me honest here?)
Even today, I’m not a big TV watcher and would pick a book over a screen nine times out of 10. I’m also something of an indiscriminate reader. I read a little of everything, though I don’t finish it all. I no longer feel compelled to stick with something that doesn’t either entertain or move me. Life is just to short to suffer through a bad or uninteresting read just to say you did.
I don’t keep track of what I read, but it’s a conservative and fair assessment to say that I’ve read thousands of books over my (almost) 51 years on the planet. I’ve largely forgotten most of them – so much so that I continuously find myself purchasing or downloading books, only to get about 1/4 of the way into them and discovering that I’ve definitely read them already.
Some books, though, stick with you. In some cases, it’s because they’re just truly transformational reads – either because the writing is far above par, or the subject resonates deeply. In other cases, it’s because you read them at a particularly memorable time and they become inexorably linked in your mind to that moment.
THAT is how I feel about “The Old Man and the Sea.” It was assigned reading during my teenage years, which were tumultuous and utterly memorable – not always in a good way, but certainly formative.
If you haven’t read it – and HOW is it that you escaped reading this Hemingway classic that is standard high school curriculum and the introduction to the cannon of so many young readers – it’s about an elderly fisherman and his epic struggle with a gigantic fish. A marlin, to be exact.
Now, maybe that sounds simplistic and a little like a riff on “Moby Dick,” another favorite of high school English teachers everywhere. But “The Old Man and the Sea” is widely regarded as one of Hemingway’s finest works.
It’s not a long book, and it isn’t hard to read. Hemingway was notoriously sparse in his phrasing and stark in his description. It was an immediate and significant success after its publication in 1952 and shortly thereafter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Hemingway has been lionized, imitated, celebrated, and hated…sometimes all at once. The truth is that he was an extremely talented and tortured man, not a terribly nice person, and an incredible writer. He drank too much and suffered from PTSD among other ailments, and his story ended tragically.
Hemingway was born on this day in Oak Park, Illinois. He took his own life with a shotgun at his house in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961. (He was also a big fan of Key West, Florida, where his home is now a museum prowled by six-toed cats; if you’re every in the area, it’s worth a visit).
Another day, another flood watch in effect – this one from noon today to 2 a.m. tomorrow. We’re in for showers and thunderstorms with locally heavy rain possible. It will be distinctly cooler, with temperatures in the mid-70s.
The weekend isn’t looking too bad – though we know things are be unpredictable where the forecast is concerned, so take this with a healthy dose of salt – with mostly sunny skies and temperatures back up in the mid-to-high 80s.
In the headlines…
The Biden administration proposed a rule to raise royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to pull oil, gas and coal from public lands for the first time since 1920, while increasing more than tenfold the cost of the bonds that companies must pay before drilling.
The Senate confirmed David Uhlmann, Biden’s nominee for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) enforcement chief, in a 53-46 vote more than two years after his initial nomination.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would impose strict new ethics rules on justices, moving over fierce objections from Republicans to address a string of revelations about Supreme Court justices benefitting from their positions.
President Joe Biden was in Philadelphia yesterday with a push for clean energy and a project for city workers.
Earlier in the day, the White House announced the first offshore wind lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, which it says will have enough clean energy potential to power nearly 1.3 million homes.
“When I think climate, I think jobs,” Biden said. “I think union jobs. Not a joke.” At Philly Shipyard, Biden toured the shipyard that will build the Acadia, a ship that will help support offshore wind projects.
he White House is navigating several labor disputes that could undermine key factors in Biden’s re-election campaign, most notably an increasingly strong economy and his political support from unions.
Republicans released a copy of an unverified tip to the FBI alleging a scheme to bribe Biden — a tip that has not been corroborated but is nonetheless fueling GOP investigations into the Biden family.
The information, memorialized in an FD-1023 form documenting interactions with a confidential informant, was released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Oversight Republicans who threatened to hold the FBI director in contempt of Congress.
Grassley said he was able to release the document himself because of “legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers,” though his move still drew a strong public rebuke from the FBI.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries lambasted Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., accusing the long-shot Democratic presidential contender of promoting racism and conspiracy theories — and being a pawn in the Republican effort to topple Biden.
Kennedy Jr. came to Capitol Hill yesterday and pointedly declared that he is neither an antisemite nor a racist, while giving a fiery defense of free speech and accusing the Biden administration and his political opponents of trying to silence him.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump released a new video attacking Biden’s environmental policies in a bid to win the endorsement of the powerful auto workers union.
The Republican front-runner is facing a growing tangle of criminal and civil trials that will overlap with next year’s presidential primaries, making it difficult for him to campaign.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said it had reached a settlement with the cash-rich shell company that planned to merge with Trump’s social media company, potentially paving the way for the much-delayed deal to proceed.
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is poised to ask the United States Supreme Court to reconsider hear his his conviction in the killing of George Floyd, his attorney said.
Last month was the planet’s warmest June since global temperature record-keeping began in 1850, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. Expect that to continue in August.
The first two weeks of July were also likely the Earth’s warmest on human record, for any time of year, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The U.S. Department of Transportation said that it was investigating why passengers on a Delta Air Lines flight had been left to swelter for hours in triple-digit temperatures while the plane waited on the tarmac at a Las Vegas airport
Gov. Kathy Hochul directed state departments to investigate health risks associated with old lead-clad cables left by telecommunication companies.
Hudson Valley Republican Rep. Marc Molinaro’s bill that would remove federal funding for any school or college that shelters migrants who have not been lawfully admitted into the country passed the House this week.
Hochul named Albert Pulido, a former citywide operations director for the New York City mayor’s office, as the state’s new deputy secretary of finance and technology.
North Country officials assailed Hochul’s announcement this week that the State Police will lease space at a recently closed private college in central New York to house a new auxiliary academy rather than utilize the vacant Moriah Shock Incarceration Facility.
All upstate counties affected by the recent flooding should be included in a disaster declaration in order to access federal assistance, GOP North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik wrote in a letter to Hochul.
New York state’s economy added 15,000 private-sector jobs last month, a 0.2% increase as the overall unemployment rate remained unchanged, the state Department of Labor announced.
As hip-hop’s 50th birthday approaches, Mayor Eric Adams has announced a set of concerts that will take things back to the genre’s essence.
“New York should be celebrating a genre that we created,” Adams said. “We raised it on the streets of New York, and it has gone out to cascade throughout the entire globe.”
Adams’ plan to hand out flyers at the border and at Big Apple migrant sites — telling asylum seekers to “consider another city” — is meeting with abject refusal from the National Guard and federal authorities.
The grandmother of the Brooklyn teen killed by a gunman’s errant bullet collapsed in grief at his funeral, where Adams condemned the rash of youth-on-youth violence that’s enveloped the city, saying authorities need to “remove the guns off our street.”
Downtown Brooklyn will get a $40 million pedestrian-friendly makeover that will bring new public spaces and street safety improvements to the area, Adams announced.
The MTA hopes Adams and the Department of Transportation don’t bail completely from bus lane expansion on Fordham Road after the city canceled plans to turn the strip into a limited-traffic “busway,” top transit officials said.
The MTA has quietly rolled out artificial intelligence to monitor turnstile-jumping in more than a half-dozen subway stations, according to a new report.
New York City’s ambitious summer jobs program — a priority for Adams — is falling short of connecting young people with high-paying industries, thanks to managerial missteps and bureaucracy that deter employers from stepping up, a new report found.
A top City Hall aide has been outed as the campaign worker who dealt with the alleged mastermind of a straw donor scheme to gain political influence in the Big Apple.
The Hollywood strikes could have an outsize economic effect on New York City, where film and TV productions in 2019 supported more than 185,000 jobs, including work in ancillary industries like legal services, truck rental and food catering.
Amid the ongoing labor strikes by Hollywood writers and screen actors, the “Real Housewives of New York” OG, Bethenny Frankel, is floating around an idea that reality TV personalities should unionize.
Get set for a shock with your next Con Edison electric bill, which will rise an estimated 9.1% next month under a state Public Service Commission decision.
New York’s second-highest court reversed a lower court ruling in Albany, allowing a Waterford woman to continue her malpractice lawsuit against Albany Medical Center for its handling of the 2017 birth of her daughter, who suffered injuries.
Code inspector Jesse Ordansky told a Troy City Council investigative hearing last night that his department found more than 40 violations at the Harbour Point Gardens complex where tenants were ordered out of their apartments nearly a month ago.
Customers lined up outside the just-opened Chick-fil-A in North Greenbush yesterday morning as the first two standalone restaurants opened in the Capital Region.
Albany County officials said that a temporary pedestrian bridge will be installed over state Route 85 after the rail trail bridge being worked on buckled last week.
Three Capital Region residents are a little richer this week, having purchased winning Powerball tickets for Wednesday’s drawing.
