Good morning, it’s Friday (!)
I think we’ve established in this space that I am not big on flying.
The older I get, the harder it becomes for me. The outside length of time I’m able to handle before absolutely losing my mind is about seven hours. I guess this means Australia and New Zealand are out, unless I can get my hands on some very strong sedatives/anti-anxiety meds.
That’s kind of a bummer, since it does limit my traveling reach. As an aside, I have been reading a lot of late about the benefits of travel. It’s quite the debate, actually.
On the one hand, travel expands your mind and your experience of other countries and cultures and peoples, and, according to at least one study, makes you marginally happier.
But, it’s also stressful and expensive, and truthfully, if you don’t spend a fair amount of time in a place, can you really know it?
That study I cited above, conducted by Washington State University, found that those who travel several times a year – even just a short way from home, like 75 miles or so – are 7 percent happier than those who don’t. I’m not sure that 7 percent is all that noticeable, to be honest. But since 75 miles is really doable – just over an hour away, depending on how fast of a driver you are, I guess it’s worth a shot.
If you drive 75 miles from Albany, you can be in another state – Massachusetts, Vermont, or Connecticut, to be exact. If you’re willing to invest in a slightly longer trip, via the air, your reach is quite a bit broader. You can go pretty much anywhere in the U.S., including Las Vegas, Nevada, for just a few hundred dollars.
To be clear, I am not a big Vegas fan, though I’ve been there several times. (For the record, a direct flight takes 5.5 hours, which is well under my tolerance limit) I don’t drink and I don’t gamble. I do, however, love people watching, and Vegas has some of the best opportunities for that available that I know of.
Also, a few very cool things are within an easy-ish drive of Vegas, including the Hoover Dam (35 minutes), Death Valley National Park (2 hours), Area 51 (1.5 hours), Zion National Park (2.5 hours) and the Grand Canyon (4 hours).
Why the fixation on Vegas? Well this weekend marks the commemoration of Nevada’s approval to be added to the Union. Nevada Day is usually held on the last Friday in October, which is today, to ensure that state residents get a three-day weekend. But officially speaking, the official date that Nevada became the 36th state was Oct. 31, 1864.
Before it was a state, Nevada was a territory, born of the silver rush that led to its nickname “the Silver State,” (no, it doesn’t have anything to do with the number of retirees who are increasingly choosing to live there). Also, oddly, despite this moniker, Nevada is the fourth-largest producer of gold in the world and supplies about 75 percent of all gold mined in the United States.
Nevada became a state in part because of the boost its Republican dominance could give to Abraham Lincoln, who was seeking his second term as president at the time. Due to the timing of its admittance to the Union during the Civil War, Nevada is also sometimes known as the Battle Born State.
Aside from the obvious – the Vegas strip – there are a few things that Nevada, in my opinion, doesn’t get enough credit for. For example, five years after it became a state, it made history in 1869 by becoming the first to ratify the 15th Amendment, which gave African-American men the right to vote.
In 2018, Nevada made history on the equity front yet again, becoming the first state to have a majority female state legislature.
Nevada Day, AKA Admission Day, isn’t a holiday anywhere outside the state of Nevada, which it has been officially observed since 1933. But given its history and important place in our nation’s story, I, for one, will take a moment to lift a proverbial glass in Nevada’s honor.
We have a not bad weekend shaping up in front of us, though it will get progressively cooler from today through Sunday. Today we’ll see mostly sunny skies and temperatures topping out at 60 degrees. Saturday and Sunday will both have a mix of sun and clouds with temperatures falling from the high-to-mid-50s to the low 50s.
In the headlines…
In the final lap of the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have started spending enormous sums on advertising and voter contact, according to financial disclosures that were filed yesterday.
The Harris campaign has held a steady advantage over Trump in terms of physical resources on the ground. It has 353 field offices and over 2,500 staff members in the battleground states.
Harris is pulling out big names to drive supporters to the polls. She held a battleground state rally in Georgia last night with former President Barack Obama and the rock star Bruce Springsteen, and will hold one tonight in Texas will be headlined by Beyoncé.
On a night when Obama joined Harris onstage at a star-studded rally in Georgia, Trump was smarting on the other side of the country — asking why Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and not him.
In underlining his support for Harris at her Atlanta rally, the filmmaker and entertainment mogul Tyler Perry assailed Trump in direct and somber terms.
A former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model is alleging that Trump groped her in the 1990s, in what she believes was an attempt to show off for Jeffrey Epstein.
With Election Day closing in, there are signs that a small but crucial segment of voters may back both abortion rights and Republican candidates, a dynamic that could hurt Harris in swing states and other Democratic candidates in pivotal races.
Elon Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC continued its $1 million daily prize giveaway to registered voters in swing states who agreed to sign a petition yesterday, despite reportedly being warned by the Justice Department that the prizes may be violating federal law.
Trump, campaigning in the border swing state of Arizona yesterday, called the U.S. a “garbage can” because of immigration policies under the Biden administration.
The New York Post endorsed Trump’s re-election bid, calling him “the clear choice for a better future.”
As Trump vowed that if elected he would immediately fire Jack Smith, his lawyers continued an effort to have the federal election interference case against Trump dismissed on the grounds that Smith had been illegally appointed to his job as special counsel.
President Joe Biden is expected to formally apologize today for the country’s role in the Indian boarding school system, which devastated the lives of generations of Indigenous children and their ancestors.
“I’m doing something I should have done a long time ago: To make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years,” Biden said yesterday as he left the White House for Arizona.
“I would never have guessed in a million years that something like this would happen,” said Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna. “It’s a big deal to me. I’m sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country.”
The owner and the operator of the container ship that hit the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six workers and shutting down the Port of Baltimore for weeks, agreed to pay more than $100 million to settle a civil claim brought by the U.S. Justice Department.
The settlement does not cover any damages for rebuilding the bridge, officials said in a news release. That construction project could cost close to $2 billion. The state of Maryland has filed a claim seeking those damages, among others.
The settlement “ensures that the costs of the federal government’s cleanup efforts in the Fort McHenry Channel are borne by Grace Ocean and Synergy and not the American taxpayer,” said Benjamin Mizer, the Justice Department’s principal deputy associate attorney general.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan largely upheld portions of New York’s gun laws that say firearms can be barred in areas deemed sensitive like schools, public transportation and hospitals.
New York students with grades and scores in the top 10% of their class will be automatically accepted to one of nine SUNY campuses, Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
The MTA’s finances are in far worse shape than the agency’s financial whizzes previously predicted, due in part to Hochul’s abrupt pause of congestion pricing, according to a report published this week by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
The longtime head chef of the Executive Mansion in Albany is dishing about what the powerful politicians eat in private — ranging from a quirky breakfast soup to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, farmers in upstate New York who rely on migrant workers say they are concerned with potential changes to immigration policy under a potential Trump administration.
A group trying to kill Prop. 1, a state ballot proposal, is making an appeal to voters with a big NFL ad buy during Bills, Jets and Giants games over the next two weeks.
The days of bumping proposals off the New York City ballot may soon be over if a couple of Manhattan Democratic state lawmakers get their way.
The New York City mayor currently has the authority to bump proposals off the ballot if he chooses, but if passed, this bill will no longer allow that.
A bigger portion of people fled New York than any other state last year — with nearly 1% of the entire Empire State heading to other parts of the country, according to newly released US Census data.
The New York Liberty were the pride of the Big Apple yesterday, marching up the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan in celebration of their WNBA Championship victory – New York City’s first basketball championship in more than half a century.
Mayor Eric Adams made an early appearance in a seafoam green Liberty T-shirt, which he wore over a tailored shirt with cufflinks. “They made it rain buckets. We made it rain ticker tape. Only for the champions, @nyliberty,” he later tweeted on X.
“We want to send a message loud and clear. There are only two types of Americans: those who live in New York City and those who wish they could,” Adams said. “This is the greatest city on the globe.”
Adams was welcomed at the New York Liberty’s championship parade with a rain of boos so intense it supposedly had to be drowned out with music.
Adams awarded the Key to the City of New York to members of the New York Liberty, the 2024 Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) champions.
Jim Walden, a prominent and well-regarded lawyer who has represented causes across the political spectrum, announced that he is entering the New York City mayor’s race.
Walden told the New York Times he would focus on “cleaning up city government”, and will propose a “zero-tolerance policy on corruption.”
“I will be Bloomberg 2.0,” said the 58-year-old litigator. “I want to go beyond what he did and expand on what he did.”
New York City Council Member Carlina Rivera introduced legislation this week that would expand eligibility criteria for city-funded supportive housing to include people with justice system involvement in the last year – a change long sought by advocates.
The aunt of a 4-year-old boy who starved to death in his parents’ Harlem apartment is suing the city’s child-welfare agency, her lawyers said.
The suit charges that the agency was on notice that children in the family were being underfed and that it negligently failed to prevent the boy’s death.
A report by the New York City DOI found the populations of two juvenile detention facilities were “fundamentally altered” by the state’s Raise the Age statute, as well as changes to bail laws, leading to more acts of violence and an inability to deter misconduct.
Workers at the two juvenile detention centers are struggling to control an exploding population of minors charged with serious crimes, an influx that has led to assaults, threats and the discovery of weapons including ceramic blades, razors and scalpels.
The New York Public Library is reopening its 125th Street branch in East Harlem, more than three years after the building was shuttered for renovations.
A former admissions officer and baseball coach at the Packer Collegiate Institute, a Brooklyn Heights private school, was charged yesterday in what prosecutors said was the sexual abuse of several children who played on his teams.
Two brothers from upstate New York were arrested yesterday on charges of attacking law enforcement agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and of participating in the violent mob that attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
A state appeals court has ruled in favor of a transgender inmate who was raped a decade ago while under the supervision of a sleeping correction officer
Assemblyman Scott Bendett, the Republican-Conservative candidate, and his opponent Chloe Pierce, the Democratic challenger, are flooding the district with campaign literature that’s hitting local mailboxes.
The state’s plans to replace the Livingston Avenue Bridge got a major financial boost yesterday, thanks to $215 million in federal funding Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer encouraged the government to support.
The Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York is taking over from Equinox and aiming to expand the nonprofit’s November holiday tradition beyond the distribution of free Thanksgiving meals.
The Democrat-run Common Council this week followed through on its promise to eliminate a City Hall job that was given to a former Rensselaer County Republican election commissioner who is awaiting sentencing on federal voter fraud charges.
Robert Fisher, the man who drugged, raped and killed a 3-year-old girl last year in Rensselaer, died Tuesday at Elmira Correctional Facility, according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Services.
The Los Angeles County district attorney said that he would request the resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who killed their parents in 1989, a step that could lead to their release from prison.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
