Good Tuesday morning.
A lifetime ago, I did a brief stint as an adjunct professor at a local four-year university, teaching Introduction to Journalism to mostly freshmen and sophomore students – most of whom had no actual interest in the profession, but needed the class to satisfy a writing requirement.
The pay for this job was a pittance – especially compared to the number of hours required to do it right – about $2,000 a semester, if I recall correctly.
I did learn a few things, the first of which is that I did not inherit professorial tendencies from my father, who was an amazing lecturer in his day. The second notable, and quite frankly downright disturbing, lesson, was that the younger generation has absolutely no use for either grammar or punctuation.
Nothing I did made any improvement on the situation.
I tried redlining their papers and making them re-write them with the edits to improve their grade, mandating the purchase and reading of Strunk and White (AKA “The Elements of Style“), introducing them to, and requiring the use of, AP style (it was a journalism course, remember). As a last resort, I tried pop quizzes that figured into their final grade.
And yet, I still received papers that failed to grasp the basics of subject-verb agreement, comma placement, apostrophe usage, how to deploy quotations, etc. The worst offenders didn’t even bother to capitalize, and used punctuation only sporadically, if at all.
I sound like an old curmudgeon, I know, because who needs grammar and punctuation in the real world?! (Um, everyone). Of course, I blame the proliferation of email and texts.
I am equally culpable here. I do not capitalize in texts, almost always write in run-on sentences, and deploy shorthand (“tmrw” instead of “tomorrow” for example) because honestly, who has time to write it all out? And I relentlessly tease my mother, who does text, but tends to write out full letters when she does (“Dear Liz…Love, Mom), complete with proper punctuation and capitalized letters and everything.
The difference between me and my erstwhile students is that I am perfectly capable of turning it on when I have to. I can write an op-ed or a cover letter or a media advisory with the best of them. I do struggle with the Oxford comma, I’ll admit, but I feel vindicated there, since its use continues to be a hotly debated topic.
Today is National Punctuation Day, which was the brainchild of a former reporter named John Kelly, who, as he once told The Washington Post, reads the paper with a read Sharpie in hand, looking forward to all the errors he’s going to find – and correct. He originally launched the day on his birthday (Aug. 22) but the decided to move it into the school year and chose Sept. 24 because “24” was the number of his favorite baseball player, Willie Mays.
Maybe creating a national day isn’t something you would think of to highlight your own personal obsession.
To be honest, there are quite a lot of them already. But to be it’s pretty amazing that a person would feel so passionately about something – even commas, periods, and exclamation points – that he would be moved to try to get others to pay attention to it in a big way.
Kudos.
We’ll have partly cloudy skies today, with temperatures in the low 70s. Sweater weather is almost fully upon us. I’d call this light jacket or sweatshirt weather for now.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden is beginning to acknowledge that he is simply running out of time to help forge a cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas, his aides say. And the risk of a wider war has never looked greater.
Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon killed at least 356 people and injured more than 1,200, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said, in the deadliest day of attacks there since at least 2006, when Israel last fought a war with the Iranian-backed militant group.
Israel’s military said early this morning that its air force was continuing to strike Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, after hundreds of people were killed the previous day in the deadliest barrage of Israeli attacks there in nearly two decades.
The nearly 500 people killed yesterday alone, including dozens of children, is roughly half the number of Lebanese killed during the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. It is unclear how many of the casualties were Hezbollah militants.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the security cabinet yesterday that the country’s aim in its military operations in Lebanon is to cut “Hezbollah from the war with Hamas,” an Israeli official said.
“I want to clarify Israel’s policy – we do not wait for a threat, we anticipate it,” Netanyahu said. “Everywhere, in every arena, at any time. We eliminate senior officials, eliminate terrorists, eliminate missiles, and our hands are bent.”
The US is sending additional troops to the Middle East and urging Americans to leave Lebanon as Israel moves toward all-out war with Iranian proxy terror group Hezbollah.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, would not say how many more forces would be deployed or what they would be tasked to do. The U.S. now has about 40,000 troops in the region.
When Biden addresses world leaders at the United Nations this morning, his aides promise a speech filled with declarations about America’s role in shaping the future. But he’s speaking at a time of deep uncertainty about the future of America’s role in the world.
The U.N. General Assembly brings scores of world leaders to Manhattan’s East Side each year. Residents are concerned about disrupted commutes.
Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly planning to visit the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday during a trip to Arizona, as she seeks to counter former President Donald Trump’s advantage with voters on the issue of immigration.
Voters across the Sun Belt say Trump improved their lives when he was president — and worry a Harris White House would not — setting the stage for an extraordinarily competitive contest in three key states, according to the latest polls from the NYT and Siena.
Trump claimed at a rally yesterday that he would protect women voters by making their communities safer and that they won’t “be thinking about abortion,” adding: “You will be protected, and I will be your protector.”
Trump confirmed that he would be the sole featured speaker at this year’s Al Smith charity dinner in New York, typically a good-humored and bipartisan political event that Harris said she is skipping in favor of battleground state campaigning.
The Nebraska state senator who Republicans hoped would help ease Trump’s path to the White House by changing how the state allocates Electoral College votes said he would not, ending a brief but intense lobbying effort from allies of both Trump and Harris.
Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has applied to the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency injunction to restore his name on the ballot in New York in the general election in November.
The Ulster County resident who officials said was the first in New York to contract Eastern equine encephalitis since 2015 has died, according to an announcement from Gov. Kathy Hochul yesterday afternoon.
The death, which the Ulster County Health Department is investigating, caused Hochul to declare the mosquito-borne EEE virus an imminent threat to the public.
Hochul outlined the steps that state officials are taking to reduce New Yorkers’ risk of exposure to the disease, also known as E.E.E.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and Rep. Jerry Nadler, as well as other transit rights groups, environmental organizations and MTA board members, all joined forces to decry Hochul’s last-minute decision to indefinitely pause congestion pricing.
As climate week convenes in New York City, Hochul is considering a bill to reconvene the state’s sea level rise task force. The task force would be in charge of updating data and making recommendations for how to best address the issue.
Federal prosecutors investigating whether Mayor Eric Adams conspired with the Turkish government to funnel illegal foreign donations into his campaign have reportedly recently sought information about interactions with five other countries.
Federal prosecutors demanded that City Hall cough up all communications between the Adams administration and five more foreign countries — a drastic expansion of the probe into Turkish campaign donations.
Adams appears to be the only mayor to have had three police commissioners during a single term since Mayor James J. Walker, who resigned in 1932 while being investigated for corruption.
New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan is planning to step down by early next year, City Hall confirmed, as Adams’ administration faces multiple federal investigations involving top officials.
Vasan cited personal family reasons as the reason for his departure. “From day one, I have made focus, ambition, and integrity a key part of my leadership,” he wrote. “The state of the department and of our public health system is strong.”
“My wife and three young children have served alongside me, bearing the brunt of my absence and shouldering so much,” Vasan said. I’m grateful for their love and have chosen that now it is time to support them and their well-being.”
Zach Iscol, New York City’s emergency management commissioner, reportedly told several people he intended to leave his job this fall, three people familiar with his thinking said, though he denied the story in a post on X.
New York City Sheriff Anthony Miranda is under investigation over an allegation he solicited donations for a law enforcement organization he leads in exchange for looking the other way on subjects of enforcement, sources told The NY Post.
A Catholic priest’s flashy style caused tension with the bishop in Brooklyn — and the priest’s deal with pop star Sabrina Carpenter may have kicked off a federal investigation that’s elevating the cloud of scandal around Adams into the heavenly realm.
Adams made clearing homeless encampments a top priority when he first took office, but his administration has blown a deadline to disclose how many of those sweeps police and other city workers are conducting and at what cost to taxpayers.
A growing number of 911 calls involving people in the midst of a mental health crisis is being routed to B-HEARD, a program that sends out teams of social workers and emergency medical technicians rather than police.
The Brooklyn bar owner who alleges the former NYPD commissioner’s brother squeezed him for cash in exchange for a promise of better police treatment is meeting with federal prosecutors this week and has turned over videos as proof.
The city’s ex-COVID czar, Dr. Jay Varma, got the boot from his job at a pharmaceutical firm yesterday — a week after he was caught bragging about hosting sex parties and attending an underground rave at the height of the pandemic.
A former Rikers correction officer won’t face charges in the 2022 death of an incarcerated person, even though the guard’s failure to render aid to the ailing man violated City Department of Correction policy and contributed to his death, the AG’s office said.
Two men accused of providing the fentanyl-laced heroin that killed the transgender activist and actress Cecilia Gentili have admitted distributing the drugs that caused her death, officials said.
A controversial high-rise plan that throws shade at the “sacred’’ Brooklyn Botanical Garden — potentially damaging its sensitive exotic plants — got the go-ahead from the City Planning Commission.
Long Island GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito hired his longtime fiancée’s daughter to work as a special assistant in his district office. He also reportedly hired a woman with whom he was having an affair, according to four people familiar with the relationship.
The Nassau County PBA is putting its weight behind Democrat Tom Suozzi in his House re-election bid — after backing his GOP opponent in a special election earlier this year.
Freshman GOP Rep. Mike Lawler holds a narrow advantage over former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones in the lower Hudson Valley’s battleground 17th District, according to a survey of likely voters conducted by Jones’ campaign.
Federal officials would bypass states like New York that have policies viewed as soft on crime and give law enforcement funding directly to localities under a new bill pitched by the Empire State’s GOP House delegation.
Two nuclear reactors in Oswego county were shut down unexpectedly yesterday morning due to a fire in an electrical breaker in a turbine building, impacting a non-nuclear portion of the plant. Officials said there is no danger, and plant operations are stable.
The Dake family plans to sell its majority share in the Stewart’s Shops to the employees of the beloved Capital Region convenience store chain founded nearly 80 years ago.
Town officials gathered yesterday to dedicate a memorial to Natalie Gillis, the Canadian aviator and wilderness guide who was killed when her plane crashed near the William K. Sanford Town Library moments after takeoff in June from Albany Airport.
The legendary dive bar Palais Royale in the Hudson/Park neighborhood and three adjoining buildings, including one with one of the most eccentric apartments in Albany, are for sale as a package. The asking price is $2.925 million.
“Weird Al” Yankovic is coming to SPAC on July 17. Tickets go on sale 10 a.m. this Friday through Ticketmaster and at livenation.com.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
