Good Wednesday morning.
Here’s my early morning attempt at creativity:
Peaceful 4 a.m.
All are sleeping, no email
What’s that? Oh, dog poo.
Admittedly, not the best haiku on the planet. The brain isn’t firing 100 percent in its pre-coffee state. BUT it does adhere to the 5-7-5 syllable requirement of this traditional Japanese poetry, and, one could argue, also focuses (sorta) on images from nature, (pooping is totally natural and necessary!), which is also a standard haiku hallmark.
It also is most certainly direct, if nothing else. Well, I tried. You get the picture.
Happy International Haiku Poetry Day!
A little history: Haiku dates back to 13th-century Japan. The 5-7-5 format started as the opening phrase of what’s known as a renga – an oral poem that is usually a hundred stanzas long and was also composed syllabically.
Because 100+ stanzas is a little on the exhaustive side, the easier to manage – but not easier to master (more on this later) – haiku was broken out on its own in the 16th century.
A Japanese poet named Matsuo Basho is widely viewed as one of the pre-eminent masters of Haiku. He penned the following classic that may strike some of you who are able to harken back to your elementary school days as vaguely familiar:
An old pond!
A frog jumps in—
the sound of water. (Translations of this vary, see here for an alternative take).
That one doesn’t move you? There’s a lot more where that came from. A lot.
Clearly, I am not a natural poet. Just because one makes a living by writing and maybe has a larger-than-average vocabulary does not automatically equate poetic genius, as it turns out. It also is a lot harder to be succinct AND meaningful. Limiting yourself to so few words is hard enough, keeping track of the syllables adds a different level of difficulty to the endeavor.
Thankfully, there’s a website for that. No really, it’s a online syllable counter, and it’s free.
In keeping with the haiku spirit, I’m going to keep this post short and sweet. Of course, if I TRULY was in the haiku spirit, I would have limited this entire missive to 17 syllables – brevity being the soul of wit and all that. Sadly, brevity is not my strong suit, as was made more than evident by the subject matter with which we started this whole mess.
Yesterday was simply spectacular from a weather standpoint, if perhaps just a tad on the breezy side for my taste. Today will be on the cloudier side, with temperatures again topping out in the mid-60s.
In the headlines…
Seven people have been seated on the jury in the hush money trial against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan. Court is not in session today, and jury selection will continue Thursday until a panel of 12, and likely six alternates, has been selected.
Before anyone was seated, jurors went through the questionnaire phase in which they were questioned by the district attorney’s office and Trump’s lawyers. As jurors spoke, Trump was seen flipping through the questionnaire, often leaning back in his chair.
The judge gave the former president a stern warning for visibly and audibly reacting to one of the potential jurors. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in the courtroom,” Judge Juan Merchan said.
Trump’s attorneys said his $175 million bond posted to satisfy the judgement in the New York civil fraud case is financially sound, and they asked the judge to set aside the attorney general’s challenge to the bond and award him costs and fees.
In his first campaign stop since his criminal trial in Manhattan began, Trump yesterday visited a bodega in Harlem where he made a pointed attack on the district attorney prosecuting him and portrayed himself as tough on crime, a central theme of his 2024 run.
The Republican presidential contender stopped by the Sanaa Convenient Store, formerly known as the Blue Moon Convenient Store, in Harlem to meet with the store’s co-owner Maad Ahmed and small business advocate Francisco Marte.
Trump plans to meet with the right-wing president of Poland this week, the latest in a series of his private interactions with leaders or emissaries from countries from the Persian Gulf to Eastern Europe, many of whom share an affinity with his brand of politics.
Ohio officials rejected a plan from Democrats to get President Joe Biden on the November ballot after the party scheduled its convention past a state election deadline.
In a letter to Ohio Secretary of State’s office, a top attorney in the AG’s office said the idea floated by Democrats — that there be a “provisional” certification of Biden as the candidate before the party’s mid-August convention – isn’t allowed under state law.
Biden made a nostalgic return to the house where he grew up in working-class Scranton, PA, kicking off three days of campaigning across Pennsylvania by calling for higher taxes on the rich and casting Donald Trump as an out-of-touch elitist.
Biden is seeking to make a sharp economic argument against Trump during a three-day swing through Pennsylvania with campaign officials framing the election as a debate.
Trump has raised $75 million less for his presidential bid than Biden and has 270,000 fewer unique donors now than at the same stage of his run for the White House four years ago.
The Biden administration is expected to deny permission for a 211-mile industrial road through fragile Alaskan wilderness to a large copper deposit, handing a victory to environmentalists in an election year.
The proposed project, the Ambler Access Project, would span more than 200 miles, including federally-owned land, meaning it requires the Interior Department’s sign-off.
The rejection is one sought by native tribes, but Biden’s decision would also keep critical minerals needed for the U.S. clean energy transition out of reach.
The United States will impose new sanctions targeting Tehran after Iran’s attack on Israel over the weekend. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said said the sanctions will be used “to continue disrupting the Iranian regime’s malign and destabilizing activity.”
“These new sanctions and other measures will continue a steady drumbeat of pressure to contain and degrade Iran’s military capacity and effectiveness and confront the full range of its problematic behaviors,” national security advisor Jake Sullivan said.
Israeli leaders were debating how best to respond to Iran’s unprecedented weekend airstrike, weighing a set of options calibrated to achieve different strategic outcomes: deterring a similar attack in the future, placating their US allies and avoiding all-out war.
Israel said some of Iran’s missiles on Saturday were launched from Iraq, but Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani denied that during an interview with CNN.
UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron has arrived in Israel for talks with its leaders about their response to Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack. He is expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed to retaliate.
Google employees in two different offices protested the company’s work with the Israeli government this week, objecting to a billion-dollar contract it signed with the U.S. ally in 2021.
The House sent two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate yesterday, forcing a trial on allegations that he has “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws.
It kicks off what’s expected to be a very short trial in the upper chamber. But Republicans who want a full Senate trial will try to drag out the process and highlight what they see as Mayorkas’ failure to stem migrant crossings and secure the southern border.
The House adopted a resolution condemning as antisemitic the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a Palestinian rallying cry.
The chamber voted 377-44-1 on the measure, with 43 progressives and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) opposing the measure and Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) voting “present.”
Speaker Mike Johnson encountered stiff resistance from Republicans as he embarked on a complicated and politically perilous strategy to push legislation through the House to send aid to Israel and Ukraine — all while beating back a threat to his own job.
The preliminary reviews for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “parameters of a conceptual agreement” on the state budget, which has yet to be either finalized or approved by state lawmakers, are in. And they’re lackluster overall.
Hochul said the state’s residents want to see a state budget “that delivers for them” and says there is a lot in the conceptual agreement she announced Monday between her and legislative leaders that those residents can be proud of.
Hochul said a preliminary budget agreement would allocate roughly $35.9 billion to New York schools — a record high — as state lawmakers close in on a deal.
Proposed changes to a popular Medicaid program – CDPAP – have sparked fervent opposition in the final days of state budget negotiations, and as Hochul announced a prospective agreement on a spending plan.
A financial aid program for college students is expected to see increases in funding in the state budget that’s in the final stages of negotiations, according to sources familiar with budget negotiations.
A proposed housing deal could create a softened version of the longstanding “good-cause eviction” legislation that has drawn the ire of the real estate industry while becoming a rallying cry for the left-flank of the Democratic Party.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) said he was on board with stiffening penalties for assaults on retail workers, even as he insisted he doesn’t believe the measure deters crime.
A newly formed parents group blasted a union-backed law that will limit public school classroom sizes – and could force the Big Apple to hire as many as 12,000 new teachers.
A handful of protesters disrupted a speech by Mayor Eric Adams yesterday, storming a stage and accusing the mayor of caring more about the needs of the real estate lobby than the working-class New Yorkers he often talks about.
The protestors managed to get uncomfortably close to Adams while he was giving a speech about the future of the city. They chanted: “What do we need? A new mayor.” He replied: “That’s not going to solve the problems in the city, by yelling.”
The protestors did not have tickets to the event, according to the event host, the Association for a Better New York. A spokesman for Adams said they used counterfeit badges to gain entrance to the Park Avenue venue and that the incident is being looked into.
With Adams and top aides facing a tangle of investigations and lawsuits, the mayor is quietly maneuvering to replace New York City’s top lawyer with a veteran litigator known for his aggressive tactics: Randy Mastro, who worked in the Giuliani administration.
The city’s current corporation counsel, Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, who has been in the role for the past two and a half years, is expected to be replaced, but not by choice, sources revealed.
Two City Council committees representing immigration and hospitals held a joint hearing yesterday that focused on the experiences of newly arrived Black migrants, drawing a crowd of more than a thousand migrants and newcomers outside City Hall.
Dozens rallied against plans to move an Upper West Side school, where a free autism program has offered a lifeline for mostly Black and Latino families, to make space for dual-language classes helping migrant children adapt to life in New York.
The city Board of Elections’ top lawyer, Hemalee Patel, has taken a “leave” and is running to be a civil court judge in Brooklyn — but objections were filed to disqualify her from the ballot.
Big Apple residents are fuming at the city’s so-called “hellish helicopter highway” they say is causing excessive noise and pollution as lawmakers seek to ban “non-essential” chopper flights.
A fire this week destroyed a home on Morris Street in Albany that housed the members of eight Spanish-speaking migrant families.
Community Bank is looking to open two new branches in the Capital Region by 2025, the company said this week.
Green Party Presidential-hopeful Jill Stein made an appearance at the Capitol yesterday to push for changes to New York’s ballot access restrictions.
City of Troy officials welcomed the $1.2 million Sutphen 95-foot midmount ladder truck at the Central Station this week. The new “Truck 2” will be housed at the Troy FD headquarters.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
