Good morning, it’s Monday. I choose this photo for a post-St. Patrick’s Day weekend last hurrah.
Hopefully, everyone was safe in their celebrations. Sadly, that was not the case elsewhere in the nation, as a shooting outside Philadelphia forced the cancellation of a holiday parade and also shut down a kids theme park.
There’s room for a public service announcement on gun culture and the need for commonsense legislation to better protect Americans. But quite honestly, I’m so demoralized by the persistent drumbeat of shootings and violence that I don’t have the energy. I’d rather focus on something humble and useful…something like the umbrella.
Stay with me here.
So many things these days have a high-tech component. You can’t even go for a simple oil change without having to reset the computer in your car. Phones. Cameras. TVs. Kitchen appliances. Heating and cooling systems that you can control remotely.
You practically need a PhD – or at least a teenager in the house – to be able to set up and operate what used to require nothing more complicated than a battery or two.
That’s why the umbrella is so amazing. Since its invention around 3500 BC in China (a precursor designed to protect against the sun arguably existed even earlier, in Mesopotamia, and was used by individuals of wealth and power), it hasn’t really changed much.
Of course, there have been advancements and improvements. The invention of water resistant fabric, for example, as well as collapsibility, and the addition of automatic opening capability, which I would argue is a big plus (especially since it doesn’t require an advanced degree to navigate).
But generally speaking the initial concept of an umbrella – a fairly basic tool designed to protect the user from the elements – remains exactly the same.
Early umbrellas were made of sticks, feathers, and even animal skins. The idea, according to legend, grew out of using the leaves of large trees to shield oneself from the rain and harsh sunlight. The first attempts at waterproofing included the use of wax and lacquer applied to paper.
The word “umbrella” is a derivative of the Italian word “ombrella,” which, in turn, is a modification of the Latin “umbella”. The root “umbra” means shade or shadow. The French word for umbrella, “parapluie” comes from “para” (to shield or protect) and “pluie” (rain). A “parasol” is an item intended to protect the user from the sun “(sol).
I love it when etymology makes sense.
In Europe, the use of parasols was largely limited in the 17th century to women, who wanted to protect their sensitive skin from the sun’s damaging rays to preserve that wealthy – and cloistered – pale look. An English philanthropist named Joseph Hanway popularized the use of umbrellas for men.
Though he was initially mocked for carrying what was at the time a 10-pound item made from a frame of whalebone or wood, thanks to Hanway, the umbrella eventually became an indispensable accessory for the well-dressed – and weather-prepared – English gentleman.
The telescopic umbrella comes to us from the brain of a man named Hans Haupt, who, the story goes, was injured in the war and therefore unable to comfortable carry both his walking stick and his brolly. He thought (sometime in the late 1920s) that a pocket-sized umbrella would be just the thing, and he was right – it eventually became a best seller.
Apparently, modern-day inventors are still trying to perfect the umbrella. But overall, it’s kind of hard to see how to make something so simple and useful much better, other than just tinkering around the edges.
For some reason, March is National Umbrella Month. This doesn’t entirely make sense as April, May, and even June are rainier, on average. This weekend, however, it’s likely your umbrella got a workout, as there were frequent periods of rain. Today, not so much. We’ll see a mix of sun and clouds with temperatures in the low-to-mid 40s.
In the headlines…
Millions of Americans took to streets and bars around the country to celebrate the start of St Patrick’s Day weekend, even turning an entire river green.
President Joe Biden used a normally festive St. Patrick’s Day celebration at the White House to acknowledge growing international concern, including among the Irish, over the humanitarian situation of Palestinians amid Israel’s military action in Gaza.
Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar took the opportunity to spotlight the role the U.S. could play in bringing peace to the Middle East.
The Irish leader, after talking about the strong cultural and economic ties between the two countries, said he would like to see a ceasefire in fighting as soon as possible, and that the two leaders will discuss ways to make that happen.
Biden’s re-election campaign said it had raised more than $53 million in February together with the Democratic Party, which is expected to widen the Democrats’ cash advantage in a general-election contest against former President Donald Trump.
The president raised $53 million alone last month, which was the strongest grassroots fundraising month since the campaign launched, according to campaign officials.
Among those efforts was a contest for supporters to attend a fundraiser on March 28 in New York with Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton that raised $4 million last month.
It appears grassroots enthusiasm for Biden still runs deep. In February, he received 562,000 contributions from 469,000 unique donors, according to the campaign. And since he began running for reelection, 97% of all individual donations were under $200.
The starting gun for the general election campaign fired as Biden wrapped up the Democratic nomination. Yet he’s still searching for ways to impress upon voters that he deserves a second term by dint of policy achievements that eluded past presidents.
Biden took jabs at Trump during Saturday’s Gridiron Club Dinner, an annual roast in Washington where politicians and journalists dress in white tie to continue a longstanding, bipartisan tradition.
Biden, 81, made a jibe about himself and Trump, 77, saying that one of them was too old and mentally unfit for the White House. “The other’s me,” Biden quipped to an audience of high-profile journalists, business leaders and politicians from across the U.S.
Biden during his speech also took shots at the Republican Party writ large, mocking the House GOP’s impeachment effort as a “joke” and criticizing the party’s refusal to pass a bipartisan immigration bill.
He also took the opportunity to address the more serious — warning of threats to freedom and democracy in the U.S. and abroad.
A special prosecutor who had a romantic relationship with Fulton County DA Fani Willis formally withdrew Friday from the Georgia election interference case against Trump after a judge ruled he had to leave or Willis couldn’t continue to pursue the charges.
Trump denounced some undocumented immigrants as “not people” and warned of a “bloodbath” if he is not reelected at a chaotic rally in Ohio on Saturday night.
Trump, speaking on a wind-whipped airfield outside of Dayton Saturday, praised his chosen candidate in the race as an “America first champion” and “political outsider who has spent his entire life building up Ohio communities.”
The former president defended some of his divisive characterizations of people crossing the border, insisting that he has to use “certain rhetoric” to “stir debate.”
Tech billionaire Elon Musk appeared to come to Trump’s defense over media coverage of the former president’s “bloodbath” comments, saying people should use X instead to avoid being “misled by the legacy media.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence says he will not be backing Trump in the 2024 election.
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence said in an interview with Fox News Channel Friday, weighing in for the first time since the former president became the presumptive GOP nominee.
The decision makes Pence the latest in a series of senior Trump administration officials who have declined to endorse their former boss’s bid to return to the Oval Office.
Pence accused Trump of “walking away” from the Constitution days after refusing to endorse the Republican frontrunner.
President Vladimir V. Putin yesterday extended his rule over Russia until 2030, using a heavily stage-managed presidential election with no real competition to portray overwhelming public support for his domestic dominance and his invasion of Ukraine.
When election officials said results gave Putin more than 87% of the vote, he said Russia’s democracy was more transparent than many in the West. In truth no credible opposition candidate was allowed to stand.
Some Russians tried to turn the undemocratic vote into a protest, forming long lines at polling stations at a predetermined time — noon — to register their discontent.
Putin has warned Nato against any move that would risk direct conflict with Russia, saying it would be “one step away from World War 3”.
Putin described the death of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny as an “unfortunate incident” and claimed he had been ready to release him in exchange for Russian prisoners held in the West.
Chris Churchill wonders whether it’s appropriate for New York’s governor to use a state luxury box to attend Buffalo Bills games.
Visitors to the governor’s luxury box have included Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and his reported girlfriend, lobbyist Rebecca Lamorte, who has sought to keep representing her employer in the lower chamber despite the personal relationship.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has told New York officials to come up with a fix for the way the state licenses cannabis businesses amid widespread frustration over the plodding pace of the state’s legal cannabis rollout and the explosion of unlicensed dispensaries.
TWU International President John Samuelsen took on Hochul, calling her a “snake” in a St. Patrick’s Day-themed TV and social media advertisement.
Albany lawmakers are rejecting Hochul’s efforts to rein in a popular $6 billion Medicaid homecare program that critics say is extremely susceptible to abuse.
Paid sick leave for New Yorkers with COVID may come to an end later this year. Hochul this year proposed to sunset the existing COVID-19 Sick Leave Law, which went into effect in 2020, in her proposed fiscal year 2025 budget.
A categorial breakdown of all three budget proposals can be found here.
Landlords whose families fled countries run by communist regimes tore into New York Democrats for backing radical housing legislation that they said would make Mao proud.
New York City Council members feeling the heat from thousands of angry co-op and condo owners are urging state pols to OK tax breaks over a new “green” mandate that could cost more than $20,000 per unit.
Two representatives appointed to a state committee considering paying reparations have claimed whites were responsible for climate change, slammed Israel and pushed to defund the police.
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh was heckled at the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade after her department vowed to go after Trump-supporting FDNY members who booed state Attorney General Letitia James at a promotion ceremony, video shows.
Ex-Govs. Andrew Cuomo and David Paterson piled on their fellow elected Democrats for fumbling issues including crime, the migrant crisis and congestion pricing during a tag-team radio interview yesterday.
Hochul defended her controversial initiative to flood the city’s public transit system with National Guardsmen, saying it’s going as planned — even as terrified straphangers vowed to avoid the rails after last week’s shooting on a packed A-train.
Even with the National Guard patrolling the subway system, some New Yorkers say they don’t feel secure, particularly after the subway shooting in Brooklyn last Thursday. Others remain unfazed.
A nearly five-minute recording of a fight on the A train shows New York’s gravest problems, like illegal guns and mental illness, distilled in a single subway car.
“I…want to say to New Yorkers: listen, people want to give the energy of because of isolated incidents that happen in our city that our city is a place of disorder …,” Mayor Adams told Q104.3 FM’s Jim Kerr. “That is just a just a lot of BS. The city is resilient.”
On the heels of the grisly shooting, Adams on Friday called on Albany lawmakers to give the city more power to involuntarily commit people struggling with “severe mental illness.”
Adams pushed his controversial involuntary removal plan a day after the subway shooting, saying the incident appeared to have involved a person with “severe” mental health issues.
New York City officials reached an agreement on Friday to modify the city’s unique right to shelter rules by capping stays for newly arrived migrant adults, following a months-long court fight over measures meant to guarantee a bed to anyone in need.
The temporary agreement would limit stays in city shelters for single adults to 30 days as long as the migrant crisis is ongoing, a significant change to the city’s 40-year-old policy that guarantees a place to stay, indefinitely, for all homeless New Yorkers.
In a Daily News op-ed, Adams called the agreement “long overdue, and a welcome step forward in addressing a crisis that has had far-reaching implications for our city, our people, and our values.”
Former LG Betsy McGaughey refutes Adams’ claims in a NY Post op-ed.
When Adams was recently asked in a public interview who his go-to source for counsel on public matters, his surprising response was, “The grand Rebbe from Crown Heights.”
New York City’s Public Schools Athletic League canceled a varsity boy’s basketball championship game on Friday after an audit found teams violated age limit and academic eligibility rules, according to Schools Chancellor David Banks.
A long-awaited city report shared exclusively with Gothamist provides new information about what types of illegal guns police are seizing and where.
The City Council Ethics Committee began formally considering disciplinary charges against Brooklyn Councilwoman Inna Vernikov this week over her decision to carry a gun to a pro-Palestine protest last fall, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
A Burger King blocks from City Hall in Lower Mahattan is so overrun with drug dealers, junkies and unhinged vagrants that an angry neighbor is suing the fast-food operator for $15 million for helping to turn “Fulton Street into an open air drug bazaar.”
The city Health Department says it will stop collecting some personal information from abortion patients, to protect the privacy of those who come to New York from states where reproductive rights have been under siege since the 2022 overturning of Roe.
Lower East Side locals are rejoicing after finally tearing down a fence that cut a beloved children’s community garden in half and involved a decade-long legal turf war with a real-estate mogul.
The number of yellow taxis on New York City streets is growing post-pandemic — but passenger demand has not kept pace, and a third of taxi medallions remain dormant, the Taxi and Limousine Commission says.
A bitter clash over space has emerged in recent weeks at a beloved New York City school building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that two programs have shared for the past decade.
Singer Alicia Keys and her management company are donating $60,000 to a fundraiser started by a seventh grader whose local school theater program is at risk of shutting down, Roc Nation confirmed.
A 108-block sidewalk restoration project led by the Central Park Conservancy balances historical aesthetics with modern needs.
Health care systems and affordable housing developers have a mutual financial interest in helping communities live healthier.
A group combating antisemitism has mailed a brochure to all high schools in the New York City metropolitan region urging them to discourage Jewish students from applying to Cornell University because of perceived Jew hatred on campus.
Organizers of last winter’s World University Games spent $57 million, reached just less than 60 percent of their ticket sales goal and dealt with funding, housing and hiring problems.
Seven overdoses, including three that were fatal, occurred in the last two days in one ZIP code, Rensselaer County officials announced in a statement Friday.
The city of Troy’s rich architectural history received another confirmation of its significance last week with the recommendation that three properties be added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
