Good morning, it’s Monday – unless you’re on summer vacation already, in which case I hope you’ve already forgotten what day it is and won’t see the need to remember any time soon.
I also hope you made the most of the absolutely spectacular weather we experienced over the weekend. It was truly a gift. Not too hot. Not too humid. Blue skies with lots of sunshine.
I was able to cram in quite a bit of outdoor time – eating outside while admiring the sun setting over the Hudson, swimming, riding, and running.
Of course, there was also the walking of multiple dogs, but that occurs rain, shine, snow, sleet, dead of night, etc. etc.. Maybe what I really need to do is bag this communications thing and apply to the U.S. Postal Service, as I already have some of the key job qualifications down pat (or what I think they are, anyway).
But I digress.
I also had the chance to celebrate some really wonderful people this past weekend – a fabulous couple, who I know will make amazing life partners; my father, (who may well be reading this right now – Hi, Dad!), and my step-father.
We didn’t really do anything special for the “holiday”. We just slowed down, hung out, talked and spent some quality time together, which is really something we should do a lot more of. I don’t love the fact that it takes an occasion to force me to do this – especially one that I always thought was a sort of made-up marketing ploy perpetrated on the world by the greeting card company.
Turns out, however, that I was wrong. Father’s Day actually has authentic origins.
Legend has it that the idea for the holiday was born in Spokane, Washington, from the brain of a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, who, along with his five siblings, were raised single-handedly by their father after their mother died in childbirth.
Dodd was reportedly listening to a sermon about Mother’s Day – a new-ish holiday at the time (1909) – and wondered why her hard-working father wasn’t getting similarly recognized. Religious leaders supported the concept and The first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910 – Dodd’s father’s birthday.
The idea caught fire, and was formally recognized via proclamation by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, and then officially designated as the third Sunday in June by President Nixon in 1972. Though the observance originally was religious in nature. It has since become quite secular – not to mention lucrative, with Americans reportedly spending more than $22 billion to celebrate the dads, uncles, grandfathers, and father figures in their lives.
I didn’t mean for this post to go on quite on so long about something that already occurred, as I like to be timely – even forward looking – whenever possible.
So, I will take a moment to wish those who are celebrating a happy Eid al-Adha, (AKA, the Festival of Sacrifice), which is one of two Eids on the annual Muslim calendar. Eid Mubarak!
It’s a day for qurbani, which translates into “sacrifice”. It’s traditional for Muslims to observe this day by offering an animal sacrifice – usually a goat, sheep, cow, or camel – to reflect the Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail, for the sake of God.
If you are familiar with this story, God steps in at the last moment and saves the boy by sending a ram to be killed in his place. Also, this story appears in other religions, too, (click here and here), though the names might be more familiar to you as “Abraham” and “Isaac.” Small world.
It’s about to get hot. Very, very hot. Dangerously hot. There will be a heat advisory in effect from noon tomorrow through 8 p.m. Thursday, with heat index values 95 to 104 degrees. The heat is coming thanks to a high-pressure system that formed over the mid-Atlantic states and appears poised to break records.
We’ll get deeper into that as the week progresses. For now, though, look for temperatures to top out in the high 80s, with a mix of sun and clouds.
In the headlines…
The Israeli military said it would suspend daytime military operations near a border crossing in southern Gaza every day “until further notice” in order to allow more humanitarian aid to enter the enclave.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly criticized plans announced by the military to hold daily tactical pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into Gaza to facilitate the delivery of aid.
“When the prime minister heard the reports of an 11-hour humanitarian pause in the morning, he turned to his military secretary and made it clear that this was unacceptable to him,” an Israeli official told the Reuters news agency.
A senior adviser to President Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, will travel to Israel today in a bid to prevent tensions between Israel and Lebanon from worsening, a White House official has said.
Some of Hollywood’s brightest stars headlined a fundraiser for Biden that took in a record $30 million-plus for a Democratic candidate, according to his campaign, in hopes of energizing would-be supporters for the upcoming White House contest.
After flying across nine time zones, from southern Italy to Southern California, Biden shifted his focus from Russia’s challenge of Western unity to raking in big money for his reelection campaign at a fundraiser featuring George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Biden ripped the Supreme Court as “out of kilter” and lobbed attacks at former President Donald Trump as he joined former President Barack Obama and A-list celebrities at the star-studded Hollywood fundraiser Saturday night.
“Institutions matter,” the president said. “What (Trump) did on January 6, and now he’s literally saying if he doesn’t win there’ll be a bloodbath — it’s outrageous. What he’s talking about is outrageous.”
Biden and his political rival, Trump, the presumptive GOP 2024 presidential nominee, celebrated Father’s Day in two very different social media messages.
Speaking in Detroit, Trump challenged Biden to take the same cognitive test he “aced,” only to confuse who administered the test, referring to Texas GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson, who was the White House physician for part of his presidency, as “Ronny Johnson.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal ban on bump stocks, the devices that can attach to a semi-automatic rifle to make it fire as fast as a machine gun — potentially hundreds of rounds a minute.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he plans to bring up a vote this week on restoring a ban on bump stocks after the Supreme Court invalidated a federal rule that outlawed the device.
Trump said he understands how President Biden feels after his son, Hunter Biden, was convicted on charges related to illegally purchasing a gun because of his past drug addiction.
Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, encouraged the Supreme Court to “intervene” in former president Trump’s hush money case, calling on the high court to hear an accelerated appeal of Trump’s conviction.
More than 170,000 people have traveled out of state to receive abortion care since January of last year, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute, a figure underlined by the increasing difficulty to access care in some states.
Out-of-state care accounted for more than 15 percent of the estimated 1 million clinician-provided abortion procedures between 2023 and March of this year, the data show.
A wildfire that quickly consumed more than 14,000 acres of grasslands and brush in a mountainous area northwest of Los Angeles over the weekend signaled the start of what experts warn could be a dangerous, prolonged fire season in the West.
The blaze began Saturday afternoon near the Interstate 5 freeway in Gorman, a community about 68 miles northwest of Los Angeles, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
Strong winds pushed flames through dry brush in mountains along Interstate 5 north of Los Angeles yesterday, and officials warned residents in the wildfire’s path to be prepared to leave if it explodes in size again.
Polls in selected sites across New York opened Saturday for those enrolled as Democrats, Republicans and with other parties to pick their candidate for November.
Upstart Democratic Socialists, an underdog businessman seeking to topple Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and ex-con Hiram Monserrate are among those seeking office in New York’s primary elections June 25.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s views on Israel made him a top target. But his primary has become a flashpoint in a broader fight within the Democratic Party. Progressive Democrats are now scrambling to try to save him from electoral defeat.
Bowman – an Israel critic who’s trailing moderate challenger George Latimer by 17 percentage points, according to a recent poll – took a shot at Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres in a podcast last week.
The federal government has signed off on final approval for the MTA’s congestion pricing plan, which was put on pause more than a week ago by Kathy Hochul.
The move by the Federal Highway Administration on Friday had long been expected, but that was before the decision to halt the plan which Hochul said was done based on the economy, New York City’s recovery, hardship concerns for city residents.
The governor’s last-minute decision to call off congestion pricing, which was decades in the making, has turned what was supposed to be a major win for mass transit into a cautionary tale.
The outgoing head of New York City’s subways and buses said the MTA will “ruthlessly prioritize” its plan to keep service from falling apart after Hochul paused congestion pricing, which was slated to finance $15 billion in mass transit upgrades.
The same millionaire donor who dumps cash into pro-congestion-pricing causes, Mark Gorton, is also a major backer of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s campaign and funder of murky causes that peddle anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Advocates argue that New Yorkers lose billions of dollars worth of time every year while stuck in the city’s gridlock traffic — and that Hochul’s move to pause congestion pricing does financial harm to commuters.
Ex-Gov. David Paterson backed reinstating the ban on masks in public to thwart moped criminals, Jew-hating rioters and other lawbreakers who wear the face coverings to hide their identities.
Hochul has urged residents to take extra precautions in light of extreme heat set to bear down on the state next week, her office announced.
Some leaders in education question whether pushing kids out of a classroom that tops 88 degrees is a good idea, as a state proposal would require.
Hochul stopped in Syracuse to highlight progress at a state-funded project that’s transforming an abandoned 600,000-square-foot complex into hundreds of affordable apartments and townhomes.
Around an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ban on bump stocks, Hochul wrongly said a gunman who carried out a racist massacre in her hometown of Buffalo had used the gun accessory.
Hochul has signed legislation into law that will require at least an annual inspection of any vessel operated on privately or publicly owned underground non-navigable waterways in response to an incident last year in the Lockport Caves.
New polling suggests New Yorkers are increasingly affected by opioid abuse and more skeptical of officials’ attempts to combat it.
An analysis of 2.5 million flights at five New York area airports shows flight disruptions have increased since the pandemic.
Sean “Diddy” Combs has returned New York’s Key to the City after Mayor Eric Adams requested it back earlier this month following the circulation of a video showing Combs physically assaulting his ex-girlfriend Cassie in 2016.
The mayor requested in early June that Combs send the key to City Hall immediately. The mayor’s office said it received the returned key last Monday.
The head of New York City’s Campaign Finance Board voiced support Friday for a number of City Council bills that would expand the watchdog entity’s straw donor enforcement powers amid ongoing issues and investigations related to Mayor Adams’ campaign.
Two elected parent leaders in New York City were removed from their school council positions on Friday, a rare step by school officials that reflected the escalating fights over broader political and cultural issues in local schools.
Retired city educators furious over proposed changes to their health care have toppled a union slate allied with powerful United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew.
New York City voters in November could have the power to repeal “misguided and dangerous” “sanctuary city” laws that severely limit the NYPD’s ability to cooperate with the feds on immigration matters and are a clear “threat to public safety.”
A hate-filled suspect destroyed 160 Pride flags around the historic Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village, cops say.
A Bronx car thief made off with a minivan on Father’s Day, apparently not realizing a 6-month-old baby was sitting inside, sparking a frantic NYPD search, officials said. The suspect was eventually nabbed and the baby found safe.
An enormous dragon named Vhagar has taken over the Empire State Building in Midtown. The 270-foot spectacle is a marketing stunt by streaming service Max to promote season two of its show “House of the Dragon”.
Two Capital Region sites have been recommended by the state Board for Historic Preservation for State and National Registers of Historic Places, according to state officials.
Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren are planning to star in a production of “The Last Five Years” on Broadway next spring.
“The Outsiders” ended up on the right side of the 2024 Tony Awards, winning Best Musical in a slight upset over Alicia Keys’ semi-autobiographical “Hell’s Kitchen” yesterday.
A star-studded production of “Merrily We Roll Along,” meanwhile, won Best Revival of a Musical, completing a full-circle comeback for a show long considered Stephen Sondheim’s greatest flop.
The full list of Tony 2024 winners can be found here.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
