Good Tuesday morning.
I quit drinking about a decade ago now, with the exception of a glass of wine in Corsica to take the edge of the post-failed-hike disappointment, which, I have to admit, only served to reinforce my belief that drinking and I don’t mix.
At 51, I don’t recover like a used to, and I have a lot of things I’d rather be doing than nursing the headache and general malaise that just one drink will bring me these days. Yes, my tolerance is that low.
So, perhaps due to the fact that alcohol hasn’t been a part of my life for a good while now, I wasn’t aware that this is Sober October – one of several promoted “dry” months on the calendar.
Dry July, for example, started in Australia; there’s also Dry January, which makes a lot of sense given the typical excesses of the holiday season.
Sober October originated in the UK as a way to raise money for people living with cancer. It became mainstream and gained popularity here in the US thanks to podcaster Joe Rogan, who decided to take the challenge a few years ago, invited his many listeners to join him, and then upped the ante by partnering with the fitness tracker Whoop.
There’s no question that cutting back on your alcohol consumption is good for your health. Increasingly, research shows that drinking even a moderate amount on the regular isn’t risk-free, and could increase – ever so slightly, but still measurable – the possibility of getting some cancers.
Cutting back on drinking alcohol, or even abstaining forever, can lower both your blood pressure AND your chance of heart failure. It can also help you lose weight (alcohol is empty calories, basically, that gets processed as sugar and carbs by our bodies…personally, I’d rather eat a bagel).
Today happens to be World Temperance Day, which, despite its rather lofty title, is mainly observed only in Sri Lanka and was pioneered by anti-colonial Buddhists. Apparently, all stores that sell wine and liquor on the island close for the day – as required by the government.
For the record, this isn’t the only day in Sri Lanka on which alcohol consumption is forbidden, and it wasn’t until 2018 that a 60-year-old ban on women over the age of 18 buying alcohol was lifted.
Temperance Day has nothing to do with the temperance movement here in the U.S., which led to the country’s ill-fated experiment with prohibition.
If you really want to go deep on that and you haven’t had the chance to watch Ken Burns’s excellent documentary, entitled, fittingly, Prohibition, I suggest you carve out some time to do so. It’s a three-part, 5-and-a-half hour series that touches on drunkards, scofflaws, hypocrites and everything in between – including the rise of organized crime.
That might sound like a big commitment. But hey, winter is coming, and you need some binge watching (see what I did there??) recommendations, don’t you?
It’s going to be hard to believe that winter IS actually around the corner, given today’s forecast. It will be unseasonably warm, with sunny skies and temperatures soaring into the 80s. We might even break some records.
In the headlines…
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida moved to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his post in an act of vengeance that posed the clearest threat yet to Mr. McCarthy’s tenure and could plunge the House into chaos.
True to his word, Gaetz made the motion to vacate just three days after McCarthy put a so-called “clean” continuing resolution or CR on the floor to avert a government shutdown, passing it with 209 Democratic votes and 125 Republican votes.
The hard-right threat to oust McCarthy has presented House Democrats with a tricky question: Should they help rescue the California Republican who has worked against their agenda and recently opened an impeachment inquiry against Biden?
Congress and the rest of Washington buzzed over the question of whether Biden and McCarthy cut a secret deal that could protect future aid for Ukraine as part of an agreement to avoid a government shutdown over the weekend.
Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota is leaving his position in House Democratic leadership over his party’s support of Biden’s 2024 reelection bid.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker fired off a letter to Biden about an “untenable” migrant crisis here, calling for an overhaul to the system and blasting the White House for a “lack of intervention and coordination at the border.”
A new Monmouth University poll released revealed a huge gap in the level of concern from voters over Biden’s advanced age versus former President Donald Trump’s.
According to the poll, 76% of voters agreed Biden, 80, was “too old” to serve another term, compared to just 48% who said the same about Trump, 77, despite the difference in their ages being just three and a half years.
An accountant who worked on Trump’s tax returns testified yesterday as the first witness at the former president’s $250 million civil fraud trial in New York.
Trump appeared in court as lawyers for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, painted him as a fraudster. His lawyers said she was out to get the former president.
He didn’t have to appear, but Trump’s presence turned the courthouse into an extension of the campaign trail. “This has to do with election interference, plain and simple,” he said. “They’re trying to damage me, so I don’t do as well as I’m doing in the election.”
The accountant, former Mazars USA partner Donald Bender, estimated that from 2011 until his retirement he spent an estimated 45% to 55% of his work time on Trump-related work.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman scrambled to distance himself from his own office’s talking points about the weekend fire alarm debacle claiming that Republicans should deal with “Nazi” colleagues before criticizing him.
The progressive Bronx lawmaker said it was “inappropriate” to refer to GOP lawmakers as “Nazis” amid political back-and-forth over his setting off a Capitol Hill fire alarm ahead of a vote on the stopgap funding measure.
Charlotte Sena, the 9-year-old girl who went missing last weekend while on a bike ride at an upstate New York park has been found in good health, police announced last night. A suspect is in custody.
“Everyone in New York is breathing a collective sigh of relief right now,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said on CNN. “There was a ransom note that was left at (Chartlotte’s) parents’ home, and yes, the fingerprints there assisted the police in identifying the suspect.”
The fingerprint led to the identification of the suspect in Charlotte’s abduction, Craig Nelson Ross Jr., 47, who lives in Milton.
A fingerprint on the note was matched to fingerprints from Ross’ arrest in Saratoga Springs in 1999 for driving while intoxicated.
Charlotte was found safe inside the cupboard of a camper RV belonging to the suspect. The girl’s parents were notified that she was rescued and appeared to be “physically unharmed,” Hochul said.
The Supreme Court announced that it would not hear a challenge to New York’s rent-stabilization regulations, under which the government sets maximum permissible rent increases and generally allows tenants to renew their leases indefinitely.
The decision thwarts the hopes of struggling landlords and means any relief is likely up to state lawmakers. That is an iffy proposition at best.
The court denied the petition brought by the Community Housing Improvement Program and the Rent Stabilization Association. But a pair of similar cases are still pending, and the landlord organizations indicated they would not give up the fight.
New York state has identified 18,000 job openings involving 400 employers who are willing to hire migrants and asylum seekers who have reached legal work status in the U.S., Hochul’s office announced.
The governor said the jobs, accessible through a new portal run by the state Department of Labor, are in a wide range of fields.
Hochul boasted she could fix key national issues including the migrant crisis “in about five minutes’’ — while touting her latest answer to New York’s asylum-seeker disaster: a new app.
An immigration attorney representing at least eight migrants in the Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Albany, said staff at the DocGo-run shelter sought to deny the ability of his clients to be represented by outside counsel for their work authorization application.
The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear a challenge to New York’s 2020 election reform laws that raised the threshold for third political parties to appear on the ballot.
Hochul signed legislation that expands the state’s “move over” law to include disabled vehicles on the side of the road, her office said.
Freed and exonerated people, advocates, and policy makers gathered in New York City to call on Hochul to help innocent New Yorkers in prison facing a nightmarish scenario by signing the Wrongful Convictions Act into law.
Mayor Eric Adams is scheduled to travel to parts of Central America to speak with migrants along what is considered to be the most treacherous portion of their journey, according to sources.
City Hall characterized the four-day journey as a chance to foster relations with local leaders in migrant hot spots and learn more about the path of asylum seekers.
Adams will depart tomorrow and visit Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia, according to his office. On his final day, he plans to visit the dangerous Colombian jungle crossing along the Colombia-Panama border known as the Darién Gap.
Adams, who vowed before taking office to run a “transparent administration,” will start only allowing reporters to ask him whatever questions they want once a week, he said.
“This will give you an opportunity, so we don’t mix the messages. We want to be as clear as possible,” Adams said.
The mayor has lashed out at the many critiques of his administration, sometimes questioning whether they may be racially biased. “All my haters,” the mayor is fond of saying, “become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success.”
Women living in New York City — and also those visiting from out of town — will now be able to access abortion telehealth services and have abortion pills delivered to their doors through the city’s public hospitals network.
Adams announced the new policy in the City Hall rotunda yesterday and made clear that it comes as a direct response to last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The city faces billions in financial pressures in the coming years that threaten to worsen inequality across the nation’s largest school system.
Drivers still don’t know how much they’ll pay to enter Manhattan as part of the MTA’s congestion pricing program. However, the list of new exemptions has grown.
Drivers who cross the Hudson or East rivers using the tolled tunnels will get a discount on the controversial coming Manhattan congestion charge, officials said.
The city welcomed its newest park yesterday, and it’s Manhattan’s first public beach as well as the largest park built in New York City since Central Park.
Scientists are studying urban animals and the diseases they carry, to understand the potential risks to people, pets and the animals themselves.
A yearslong campaign of bullying left a Long Island cheerleader wanting to kill herself — even getting mocked over the sudden death of a horse that was bought for her emotional support, according to a $6 million lawsuit.
The Capital Region has four main industry clusters: digital gaming, semiconductors, clean energy and life sciences, according to a new study done for the Center for Economic Growth.
The Albany Firebirds will join the new Arena Football League for its inaugural season in 2024, team officials announced.
Russell Sage College President Christopher Ames, the college’s 10th president, announced to the school community that he would retire after the end of the current school year, on June 30, 2024.
September’s Too, a new bar opening Oct. 13 in the former DiCarlo’s Gentlemen’s Club building on Central Avenue, brings back the name of a 1980s nightclub at the same location.
Former New England Patriot Russ Francis and an expert on aviation safety were killed in a plane crash Sunday at Lake Placid Airport.
