Good morning, it’s Thursday.
During the pandemic I, like a lot of other people, spent a lot of time outside. With gyms closed, I had few options for working out other than the Peloton, which gets old after a while, and running. Without other options for entertainment (restaurants, theaters, book stores, cafes, etc.) I had a lot of time on my hands.
The dog got a lot of good walks in during that period. While Henry (we only had one doggo at the outside of the Covid crisis) got his ya-yas out at the Capital Hills Golf Course in Albany (an amazing place for well-behaved off-leash walking when the duffers aren’t playing), I trailed behind listening to the podcast du jour.
We usually walked all 18 holes, which, if you’re familiar with the course, is a very hilly experience that takes at least an hour, depending on how fast you walk/jog. That’s plenty of time for one or even two editions of “Phoebe Reads a Mystery,” which is an amazing experience that is more or less exactly as advertised. The host, Phoebe Judge, reads a chapter of an iconic mystery every day and uploads it to the inter webs for subscribers to enjoy.
Titles have included everything from Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” to Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” and several Agatha Christie tomes. The definition of “mystery” is pretty loose here, as you can tell. I confess that I haven’t listened to every one of the (by my count) 27 books Judge has narrated, but of those I did sample, the Sherlock Holmes offerings were by far my favorite.
As an aside, let us take a moment to acknowledge just how wonderful it is to be read aloud to by someone who knows what they’re doing. Perhaps it’s a throwback to the days when my mom and/or dad read to me before bedtime as a kid, but as much as I enjoy reading on my own, it’s a real treat to have someone else do the work for you.
Also, in my opinion, listening to a book DOES INDEED count as reading. I know not everyone agrees with this, and yes, content consumption (absorbing what you read/hear) does differ based on the medium, but I’m sticking to my guns on this one.
Come at me.
Anyway, back to Sherlock Holmes, the drug addicted crime-fighting mastermind and early pioneer of forensic science, whose creation was a significant milestone in the field of mystery writing. He was the brainchild of the Scottish writer and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born on this day in 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Doyle wrote other books during his career, including some nonfiction, but is best known for the tales of Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watson. So popular was Sherlock Holmes that when Doyle killed the character off in “The Final Problem”, along with Holmes’ longtime nemesis, Professor Moriarty, readers rose up in opposition so great that he was forced to resurrect Holmes a decade later in “The Adventure of The Empty House”.
Doyle struggled with the popularity of Sherlock Holmes, and had killed off his cash cow due to a belief that he was being held back from his ability to pursue other projects – most notably his efforts to popularize Spiritualism (the belief that the dead can communicate with the living through an earth-bound medium).
Doyle was also experiencing difficulties in his personal life, including his father’s death and his wife’s battle with a virulent form of tuberculosis, which added to his desire to move on from the character that had brought him considerable fame.
While he might not have been happy about it, Doyle created one of the most popular and widely recognized characters in modern fiction. in fact, Guinness World Records lists Sherlock Holmes as the most portrayed human literary character in film and TV history. Even though well over a century has passed since his first introduction, Holmes remains as popular as ever.
Happy Sherlock Holmes Day, all!
The forecast today is, well, quite frankly, crappy. It will be rainy and chilly, like light sweater-with-a-raincoat weather. Don’t blame me if you’re cold and damp, you’ve been forewarned.
In the headlines…
Two young Israeli Embassy aides were shot and killed outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in downtown Washington last night by a man who shouted pro-Palestinian slogans after he was detained, according to law enforcement officials.
Pamela Smith, chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, said that a suspect – 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago – is in custody in connection with the shooting.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a social media post that the “two Israeli Embassy staff were senselessly killed,” adding: “We will bring this depraved perpetrator to justice.”
The victims were a “young couple about to be engaged,” Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the US, said at the news conference. “A young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem.”
President Donald Trump sent his condolences to the families of two victims, saying on Truth Social that antisemitism, “hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”
Trump ambushed South African president Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday with a long video he says supports unfounded claims of persecution against minority whites who previously ruled under the racist apartheid system.
After starting with a chummy chat about golf, Trump shocked Ramaphosa and his delegation by screening a video in the Oval Office that he claimed showed attacks on white South Africans and funerals of murdered white farmers.
Trump showed a video and leafed through printouts that he falsely claimed showed widespread persecution of white South Africans. The country’s president tried to correct the record.
The US has accepted a 747 jetliner as a gift from the government of Qatar, and the Air Force has been asked to figure out a way to rapidly upgrade it so it can be put into use as a new Air Force One for Trump, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed.
A federal judge in Boston said that the Trump administration had violated an order he issued last month barring officials from deporting people to countries not their own without first giving them sufficient time to object.
The House voted early this morning to begin debating Republicans’ sweeping domestic policy bill, as party leaders raced to unify their fractious ranks and lock down enough votes to pass the main elements of Trump’s agenda over solid Democratic opposition.
Speaker Mike Johnson and his deputies waged an intensive effort to win over holdouts with concessions and a final pressure campaign by Trump.
A 42-page managers amendment released by House GOP leaders late yesterday includes changes to win over both the budget hardliners in the House Freedom Caucus and blue-state Republicans pressing to ease the tax burden on their constituents.
The manager’s amendment includes changes to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap and proposed Medicaid reforms, along with other proposals.
The House Rules Committee voted 8 to 4 to advance the bill late yesterday after a marathon session that lasted nearly 22 hours. Republican leaders later scheduled two votes, one to begin debate and a second to pass the bill, before sunrise.
When Republicans first rolled out a proposal last week to invest $1,000 in a “MAGA account” on behalf of every American baby born over the next four years, they were not exactly subtle about whom the public should credit for the cash.
States and cities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are heading into hurricane season with an extraordinary level of uncertainty, unable to gauge how big cuts at vital federal agencies will affect weather forecasts, emergency response and long-term recovery.
U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik is the early favorite among Republicans to be their party’s nominee in next year’s race for governor, according to a new poll from the Siena Research Institute.
A third of voters registered with the GOP said they don’t know who they would vote for, putting any of the three leading candidates in a position to prevail in a primary.
A slim majority of New York voters would prefer someone else as governor rather than reelect Gov. Kathy Hochul next year, while her favorability and job approval ratings have changed little, the poll also found.
Delayed payments from state agencies have put New York’s nonprofit organizations at risk, a new report contends.
A prominent New York gun rights advocate is being sued for defamation by Oliver L. North, the one-time president of the NRA, in a court battle that has shed new light on the internal turmoil within the beleaguered organization’s upper ranks.
Hochul trumpeted the inclusion of nearly $400 million for downtown Albany in the state budget, introduced the consulting firm that will lead the planning process for the state’s revitalization initiative and touted plans to remake the decrepit state museum.
Republican lawmakers in Albany are fuming after Democrats moved to block a bill that would give colleges and universities more teeth to combat antisemitism.
Mayor Eric Adams pitched a $422 million makeover to Midtown’s Fifth Avenue shopping district that would be almost entirely funded by city taxpayers.
A Brooklyn businessman served as a proxy for the government of Uzbekistan to leverage Adams’ stature as the leader of the nation’s biggest city to sanitize the regime’s tarnished image, law enforcement records reviewed by THE CITY allege.
First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, the second-most powerful man in city government, oversees more than 300,000 employees and a $115 billion budget using an iPhone outfitted with a tiny keyboard resembling his smartphone of choice.
Socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani trashed Barack Obama as “pretty damn evil” in a series of resurfaced tweets where he questioned the former president’s liberal cred and accused him of lying.
Mayoral frontrunner Andrew Cuomo went on the offensive on news that he’s under criminal investigation by Trump’s Department of Justice, rolling out a campaign ad blasting the probe as a nakedly political effort to disrupt his momentum in the race.
A poll conducted by SurveyUSA between May 14 and 17 among 1,050 registered voters, shows that Cuomo is the first choice of 43 percent of likely Democratic voters with just over a month until the June primary.
Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, polling in second place in the Democratic primary for New York mayor, is under scrutiny for his hard-line anti-Israel base for saying the country has a right to exist.
A dozen building workers at a luxury condo tower in Manhattan’s Financial District, where units sell for up to $20 million, have said they are preparing for a rare strike after months of failed negotiations with the developer-controlled board.
The unions representing the FDNY’s EMS workers are endorsing Justin Brannan’s campaign for city comptroller, a move that highlights a rift unfolding inside the Fire Department’s labor ranks over who to back in the competitive race.
Ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to pay back $330,000 for his misuse of an NYPD detail during his ill-fated 2019 campaign for the White House, admitting that he’d made a mistake and withdrawing a lawsuit fighting restitution. But taxpayers aren’t off the hook.
Subway and bus riders are fuming over OMNY glitches that billed them late, kept them from tapping through turnstiles — and have them enduring lengthy waits for customer service on the MTA’s new fare-payment system.
A New York police inspector was transferred after allowing dozens of prospective officers to continue in the hiring process even though they failed to meet mental health standards set by the department, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Facing a chorus of boos along with some occasional cheers, acting Columbia University President Claire Shipman presided over commencement yesterday, capping another turbulent year for a university in crisis and in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.
Shipman kept talking over the boos, praising the families, teachers and graduates. “Graduates, it is time to give the world your gifts,” she said.
Mayhem erupted outside Columbia University’s graduation as some students burned their diplomas and cops tussled with dozens of rowdy anti-Israel demonstrators, arresting at least two people.
On the day he was to attend his commencement, ICE officials wouldn’t let Mahmoud Khalil hold his newborn son at a Louisiana detention center, where the Columbia grad student faces deportation for his participation in pro-Palestinian campus protests.
Yesterday, evening, hours before the latest immigration hearing in the case of Khalil, the Trump administration was in the midst of pitched battle to prevent him from holding his 1-month-old son.
The woman left clinging to life from a vicious beating on Randalls Island was robbed of the e-bike she was riding home from work — and will never fully recover if she manages to survive, her devastated daughter said.
A disgraced New York State trooper who deliberately shot himself during a Long Island traffic stop and then lied about it — allegedly to impress a woman — secured a sweet plea deal of six months behind bars.
At least 30 lawsuits have been filed against Four Winds Hospitals, an operator of mental health facilities, for failing to address numerous allegations of sexual abuse against minors at their locations in Saratoga Springs and Katonah.
Crucial, life-saving research is at risk due to federal cuts, and it’s not yet clear how the State University of New York will continue all of that work, SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. said in his State of the University speech yesterday at the Egg in Albany.
CBS6 Albany morning anchor Olivia Jaquith went into labor yesterday while co-anchoring the morning news. Viewers following the live labor developments were captivated by her composure. She left for the hospital after the broadcast.
Voters rejected the Scotia-Glenville school district budget on Tuesday. The $67 million spending plan required 60 percent of voters to support it because it exceeded the tax cap, but only 1,206 “yes” votes — 55 percent — were cast.
Norlite is considering ditching its longtime incineration of hazardous waste and instead, potentially fueling its towering kilns off Saratoga Street in Cohoes with natural gas to turn shale into construction aggregate, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
