Good morning, it’s Wednesday. The middle of the week is upon us.
I toyed with the idea of making this week’s post all about birthdays in honor of my personal birthday week. This idea came to me after I realized that Monday’s missive was all about the birthday of aviation legend Amelia Earhart, followed by yesterday’s musings about my own day of arrival of the planet 51 years ago.
But then I started Googling around, and realized how daunting a task that would be. SO MANY interesting people to choose from on any given day.
How, for example, to select George Bernard Shaw (born on this day in 1856), the Irish playwright, critic and activist who revolutionized comedic drama, and whose best known work, Pygmalion, was adapted into the popular Broadway musical My Fair Lady; over the English writer Aldous Huxley (born on this day in 1894), who wrote, among MANY other things, Brave New World, which infamously warned about the dangers of too much technology?
And that’s just the beginning.
How does one prioritize, say, rock legend Mick Jagger (born on this day in 1943 and still performing) over Olympic figure skating phenom Dorothy Hamill (born on this day in 1956), or the hysterical and extremely talented actress Sandra Bullock (born on this day in 1964) over one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, the Bronx-born Stanley Kubrick, (born on this day in 1928), who brought the world, among other things, 2001: A Space Odyssey , and A Clockwork Orange?
I’ll tell you the answer: You don’t even try. It’s too hard. You pick something easy instead, something straightforward and relatively simple (or so I thought, more on that in a second) and uncontroversial.
Something like milkshakes.
According to the American Heritage College Dictionary, a milkshake is a “a beverage that is made of milk, ice cream, and often flavoring and is blended or whipped until foamy.”
Unless, of course, who hail from New England, where it is absolutely taboo to add ice cream to your milkshake – a simple concoction of milk and flavored syrup that is vigorously shaken – because doing so makes it a frappe.
AND, if you want a coffee-flavored version of the former, and you happen to be in Rhode Island, well, then you simply order coffee milk, though you do so knowing that this is made with coffee concentrate, and therefore caffeinated.
So maybe this wasn’t as simple an undertaking as I originally thought.
The first version of a milkshake, which emerged in the late 1800s, was an alcoholic beverage that resembled eggnog. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that this concept shifted to be a more wholesome version of this treat, featuring milk and chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry flavored syrup.
Ice cream was a later addition, perhaps “invented” by a Walgreens employee in Chicago named Ivar “Pop” Coulson, (he also used malt powder in his creation), and then popularized at the local malt shop or soda fountain – a big teenage hangout. The invention of the electric blender in the 1920s made milkshakes easier and quicker to make. Dairy Queen added them to the menu in 1949, making the milkshake a staple of fast food offerings.
Today, ironically, we’ve come full circle in some sense with the introduction of “boozy” ice creams – alcohol-infused sweet treats with a kick.
My personal history with milkshakes begins and ends with the Fribble, which you can still get today – if you can find a Friendly’s to make it for you.
This is all an incredibly warm-up for me to wish you a Happy National Coffee Milkshake Day, the whys and wherefores I can’t really nail down. Coffee isn’t my favorite flavor – as we know, I’m more of a chocolate girl. But I wouldn’t turn one down in a pinch.
It’s going to be hot (high 80s) and mostly sunny with a few afternoon clouds. Enjoy it while you can, because it looks like we’re in for a spate of weird, stormy and on-the-cool side weather.
In the headlines…
The White House yesterday forgave $130 million in student debt for 7,400 borrowers who attended CollegeAmerica, a now-defunct institution in Colorado that officials said misled borrowers about their loans and career prospects.
The Education Department has opened a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s legacy admissions policy, inserting the federal government directly into a fierce national debate about wealth, privilege and race after affirmative action was struck down.
A federal judge struck down a stringent new asylum policy that the Biden administration has called crucial to its efforts to curb illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, under pressure from the hard right to take aggressive steps against the Biden administration, suggested yesterday that the House was moving toward opening an impeachment inquiry against the president.
On the eve of Hunter Biden’s court appearance to enter into a plea deal for misdemeanor tax crimes that would allow him to avoid prison time, House Republicans and conservative groups urged a judge to throw out the agreement he reached with prosecutors.
United Parcel Service announced yesterday that it had reached a tentative deal on a five-year contract with the union representing more than 325,000 of its U.S. workers, a key step in averting a potential strike.
In a host of speeches delivered overseas Jill Biden has used her platform for more political purposes, including making her case that her husband has promoted democracy and revitalized global relationships strained by former President Donald Trump.
A Colorado man convicted last year of conspiring to defraud people who donated money to build the kind of border wall championed by Trump was sentenced to five years and three months in prison.
President Biden’s younger dog, Commander, has been involved in several biting incidents at the White House and in Delaware, according to US Secret Service emails, which show agency personnel raising concern about safety around the German Shepherd.
Commander bit or otherwise attacked Secret Service personnel at least 10 times between October 2022 and January, including one incident that required a hospital visit by the injured law enforcement officer, records show.
The White House said the Bidens will provide more training and improved control techniques for Commander.
Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has cut about a third of his campaign staff as his bid for the White House spirals downhill amid grim poll numbers and sudden financial worries.
DeSantis’ presidential campaign, facing questions from allies and donors about the strength of his candidacy, has now eliminated the jobs of 38 aides this month.
A bill headed for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk would change the pay model of New York ambulance providers, as emergency service agencies have grappled with deep financial issues and staffing shortages for years.
Proposed legislation that would restrict campaign contributions from those seeking to do business with the state represents an attempt to remove the potential reality or wrongdoing as well as its appearance.
Lawmakers in Albany voted to designate community gardens statewide as crucial to the urban environment, especially in the fight against climate change. The bill awaits the governor’s signature but the role of these gardens stretches back decades.
A group of New York Republicans filed an appeal to a state court decision that ordered new congressional maps be redrawn in the latest salvo in the ongoing battle for control of the House.
State Chief Judge Rowan Wilson has hired the state Senate Democratic majority’s director of policy and research as his top staffer — after Democrats rejected Hochul’s prior choice for chief judge Hector LaSalle.
All 13 school buildings in East Ramapo received a failing rating in a recent state-mandated survey. The New York Civil Liberties Union is calling for a state takeover.
A Rochester native is being tapped to lead the United States Navy. Biden is nominating Adm. Lisa Franchetti to the post. If confirmed, she would become the first woman to head the Navy and to join the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Rat complaints to New York City’s 311 line are down 20% over the last month and a half, Mayor Eric Adams and his cadre of anti-rat crusaders revealed.
Adams visited the Ebbets Field Apartments Monday afternoon to assure residents he would do everything in his power to address a nightmare neighbor in apartment 11F.
While there is no reliable accounting of migrant problems, housing and immigrant rights advocates say conditions at some sites are deplorable, the city’s offerings are becoming more uneven, and it has become increasingly difficult to ensure basic needs are met.
The Big Apple is now awarding tens of millions of dollars to private firms to staff its growing number of emergency migrant shelters — as the asylum seekers crisis plaguing the city continues to escalate, new contracts revealed.
Cops racing to the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 stopped the civil rights leader’s followers from beating a suspected gunman caught at the scene, with the police asking each other, “Is he with us?” according to bombshell testimony released yesterday.
A fast-moving “funnel” cloud wreaked havoc on outer-borough neighborhoods yesterday, downing 11 trees in Brooklyn and knocking out power to a nursing home in Staten Island, witnesses and authorities say.
The billionaire owner of the foundering Tottenham Hotspur soccer team, Joe Lewis, illegally doled out stock tips to friends, lovers and staff in a “brazen insider trading scheme,” according to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office.
Two city correction officers and an assistant deputy warden have reportedly been suspended over the death of an inmate at the troubled Rikers Island jail complex over the weekend.
SAG-AFTRA held its biggest rally yet yesterday, flooding Times Square with picketing actors and writers in what marked the 12th day of the recently launched actors’ strike.
Temperatures are forecast to approach nearly 100 degrees in New York City over the next few days as warm winds from the Southwest that have triggered a massive heat wave blow into the city.
A new pilot launching this fall will aim to replace gas stoves in New York City Housing Authority apartments with induction stoves.
Gawkers beware: Nassau County cops don’t want you taking selfies in front of the accused Gilgo Beach serial killer’s house for your Instagram account.
Investigators have been excavating the backyard of the suspect’s home after finding “disturbances” that might be buried objects, the district attorney said.
A federal judge tasked with sentencing the first of four men in connection with actor Michael K. Williams’ overdose death walked a line between prosecutors’ requests for a long prison sentence and the actor’s loved ones’ pleas for leniency and treatment.
An Albany teenager charged with fatally shooting a 21-year-old man inside a Morton Avenue deli Saturday night had rolled in and out of Family Court for the past several years, and, his stepfather said, got little in the way of assistance or services.
Colonie filed code violations against a Wolf Road hotel where busloads of migrants have been continuing to be dropped off since late May, prompting an unrelated legal battle in state Supreme Court between local officials and the Adams administration.
During a raucous meeting Monday night, many in the overflow crowd broke into applause after Rotterdam Town Board members unanimously passed a resolution declaring a state of emergency to halt more migrants from being brought to the municipality.
Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin’s son, Sean, was eliminated from the ABC reality dating series “The Bachelorette” on Monday night, after making it to within one episode of bringing her home to meet his family.
It looks like the August 26th running of the $1.25 million, Grade I Travers Stakes will be a showdown among the three colts that were winners of a Triple Crown race this year.
Thunderstorms along the East Coast resulted in at least five flights including one from Nice, France to be diverted to Albany International Airport yesterday.
The city of Troy’s drinking water supply is not threatened by gas, oil and other fluids from a vehicle that landed in Otter Creek, which flows into the Tomhannock Reservoir, on Monday night, city officials said.
Rensselaer County outlined plans to relocate its senior center, motor vehicle and other services from the village of Hoosick Falls to a former Dollar Tree store on Route 22 just north of the Hoosick Falls school district campus.
Sarju Patel, who played on the University at Albany men’s basketball team last year as a graduate student, will compete in “The Basketball Tournament” today.
Former NFL running back Dion Lewis, who was added to the University at Albany football staff in March as a volunteer assistant coach, is no longer with the program, head coach Greg Gattuso said.
Mega Millions is still up for grabs, and one of the largest lottery jackpots in U.S. history is even bigger now.
