Good morning, it’s Monday.
I remember as a child feeling very jealous of a particular friend whose mother went all out for Easter. On the morning of the holiday, she would awaken to a large basket perched at the foot of her bed that was stuffed to the brim with all manner of treats – small toys, candy, stickers, art supplies – ostensibly left by the Easter Bunny in the night.
Even when we did celebrate Jewish holidays, we were not a big candy family. My mother limited by intake of sugar, which was good for my health, I now realize, but also had the unintended consequence of making me wildly interested in, and – when I finally got my hands on it – addicted to, sugary junk food.
This didn’t really become a problem until I had my own money to spend and some limited independence in determining where and on what to spend it.
I received a bi-weekly allowance from my grandfather, who faithfully mailed this to me well into my late teens. It started out relatively small, and worked it’s way up to, if I remember correctly, something like $15 a week – a fairly considerable sum at the time. It was only a few dollars when I was still in middle school, which was more than enough to keep me well stocked with all manner of snacks, which were available for less than $1 or or at the cafeteria.
More often than not, I would spend my snack money on Twinkies, which I loved beyond all reason. This makes very little sense to me now, especially since Twinkies contain neither chocolate nor peanut butter. They’re fairly bland and disturbingly spongy, tasting of little else than a vague memory of butter and vanilla – as I recall, I haven’t had one for decades.
It is an urban myth that Twinkies are so full of preservatives that they will last forever in their plastic packaging. They will eventually go bad, just like any other foodstuff.
They are, however, designed to be shelf stable for an extended period of time – 45 days, to be exact, which was increased from 26 days in 2012 – thanks to the presence of sorbic acid and potassium sorbate, among other chemical additives, which enables them to stay fresh longer than a standard baked good.
According to Twinkie lore, what would go on to become an iconic American snack food was introduced to the world on this day in 1930 by a man named James Dewar, a vice president at the Continental Baking Company in Chicago. Continental Baking at the time was making all manner of fruit-filled treats, including a strawberry shortbread that was only available for the few months of the year that strawberries were in season.
Dewar wanted to put the machinery and the pans used to make the shortbread to work, so he devised a cream-filled spongecake that he was, legend has it, inspired to call “Twinkies” after seeing a billboard advertising Twinkle-Toe Shoes. The original Twinkie featured a banana cream filling, which was replaced with vanilla during WWII when bananas were hard to find.
Somewhere between 400 and 500 million Twinkies are sold annually by Hostess, which briefly stopped producing the snack cakes in 2012-2013 after the company declared bankruptcy, spurring a brief binge-buying spree as fans panicked that they might be unable to find a fix.
An investment group swooped in and scooped up the company for around $410 million, and Twinkie fans breathed a sign of relief when their favorite snack returned to supermarket shelves. Four years later Hostess, valued at around $2.3 billion, was sold a again in 2016, this time for $725 million, and then AGAIN in 2023 to J.M. Smucker in a deal that was reportedly worth $5.6 billion.
Twinkies are 100 percent iconic and deeply ingrained in American culture, but I am sorry to say that the infamous so-called “Twinkie defense,” which supposedly got Dan White, who killed progressive San Francisco’s mayor George Moscone and the state’s first openly gay elected official, Supervisor Harvey Milk, in 1978, a lighter-than-expected sentence, is largely a myth.
Happy National Twinkie Day! I won’t be partaking in celebration, having ingested more than my lifetime’s share of Twinkies. But, if you choose to indulge, know that a single Twinkie contains 150 calories, 5 grams of fat, 26 grams of carbs, and 1 gram of protein.
It’s going to be slightly cooler than usual for this time of year – low-to-mid 40s, compared to low-to-mid 50s – with cloudy skies. There’s no rain in the forecast, though, so count your spring blessings. (Summer starts in 76 days, in case you were wondering).
In the headlines…
An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces in a risky Saturday night mission that took commandos deep into enemy territory, President Trump said on social media early yesterday.
“We have rescued the seriously wounded, and really brave, F-15 Crew Member/Officer, from deep inside the mountains of Iran,” President Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, calling him “a highly respected Colonel.”
The Airman, who hasn’t yet been publicly named, was one of two aircrew flying the F-15 when it was shot down. A US military team rescued the aircraft’s pilot later that day, but the second airman was stranded for 36 hours in mountainous terrain.
Despite his injuries, the weapons officer was able to climb more than 1.3 miles and avoid detection by nearby Iranian fighters spurred by the chance to capture an American soldier and the $60,000 bounty placed on his head.
An Iranian news outlet yesterday reported that multiple U.S. aircraft were destroyed during the mission to rescue a stranded American service member in Iran.
A federal judge on Friday halted efforts by the Trump administration to collect data that proves higher education institutions aren’t considering race in admissions.
Trump is asking for $152 million from Congress to try to transform Alcatraz, the popular tourist attraction, back into a maximum-security prison.
Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first Easter Mass with a call to lay down arms and seek peace to global conflicts through dialogue, but he departed from a tradition of listing the world’s woes by name in the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Savannah Guthrie will return to NBC’s “Today” show today, the day after Easter, more than two months after the disappearance of her mother, Nancy Guthrie.
Early this morning Eastern time, the astronauts of Artemis II will enter the lunar sphere of influence, when the pull of the moon’s gravity becomes stronger than Earth’s.
The Artemis II mission elicited deep feelings for many Americans, particularly in Houston, the home of mission control.
The crew of NASA’s Artemis II will make its closest approach to the moon this afternoon after launching from Kennedy Space Center last week.
UCLA’s women’s team stymied South Carolina, 79-51, yesterday in the national title game to secure the program’s first NCAA championship. It was a dominant UCLA effort from the opening tip that turned into a runaway in the second half.
Making its first title game since the NCAA adopted women’s basketball as an official sport in 1982, UCLA looked nothing close to tentative or unsure of itself on such a pressure-packed stage — especially against an opponent far more familiar with the spotlight.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has spent the last four months beating the auto-insurance affordability drum and fighting the trial lawyers and unconvinced lawmakers who stand in her way. It’s been a massive sticking point in negotiations to finish her now-late budget.
The dispute over auto insurance reform, putting Uber against the trial lawyers, is one of several dragging out negotiations over the state’s multibillion-dollar budget, which blew past its April 1 deadline and will have been late every year since Hochul took office.
“I think we might be in the same galaxy, but I don’t know if we’re on the same planet yet,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said last week of conversations around Hochul’s car insurance proposal.
Hochul’s running mate – former NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams – reportedly dished out $435,000 in taxpayer-funded political pork to a shady migrant-shelter provider at the center of a federal corruption probe.
Fifteen state senators, led by Michelle Hinchey, urged Hochul to approve a gas and diesel tax holiday. They say rising costs—linked to the war in Iran and global supply disruptions—are hitting commuters, farmers, and businesses hard.
The decision to disqualify Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman from the state’s public campaign finance program may fundamentally change the calculus of his campaign for governor.
Albany should join the ongoing search for elusive documents about the toxins that swirled above Ground Zero after 9/11, said Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who has asked Hochul and the leaders of both houses to probe the issue.
New York State lawmakers are pushing a bill that would force the MTA to tell riders about bed bug infestation on trains and buses within 24 hours.
Andrew Hevesi, a lifelong Democrat and state assemblyman from Queens, was told his voter registration had been changed without his knowledge to the Working Families Party. He has a culprit in mind.
Former state Sen. Antoine Thompson, who represented Buffalo and once owed the Internal Revenue Service $56,289 in back taxes, is now living in Maryland and seeking election to that state’s House of Delegates.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested more people in New York in the months of November, December and January than they did at any other time since 2022, a Times Union analysis of new federal apprehension data shows.
The Trump administration’s refusal to pay the financially strapped United Nations is creating ripple effects beyond the international stage — including a potential fiscal dilemma for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani, who has been taking steps to try to strengthen his ties with Black voters, is issuing two reports that focus on the ways nonwhite New Yorkers are being left behind in an attempt to tie his affordability agenda to racial equity.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers urged Mamdani not to cut the FDNY’s budget — and to fund long-overdue renovations at the city’s crumbling firehouses.
Mamdani is under fire from local pols and other critics for blaming guns rather than criminals for the shooting death of a 7-month-old girl in Brooklyn.
Steve Fulop, CEO of the Partnership for the City of New York, said many corporations are considering leaving or shifting their workforces to less costly states after it was revealed Apollo Global Management is plotting a second US HQ in the Sunbelt.
A fight over the future of the Elliott Houses and three nearby public housing developments, all in the trendy Chelsea neighborhood, is escalating, in a high-stakes test of the city’s responsibility to its lowest-income residents.
The Rev. Al Sharpton wants to leave his mark in the face of gentrification, which he says has diluted Harlem’s political power. He has moved his National Action Network into a new home, which will be called the House of Justice Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Workshop.
April showers brought silk flowers yesterday as New Yorkers promenaded along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan for the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival.
The New York Islanders fired head coach Patrick Roy on Sunday and hired Peter DeBoer, who most recently coached the Dallas Stars in 2024-25.
The City of Hudson school board is trying to find cuts to fill a multimillion-dollar gap before submitting its proposed budget to the state on April 24.
Since New York legalized recreational cannabis in 2021, a combination of high-potency products, regulatory loopholes and the broad normalization of marijuana has created what some describe as an escalating crisis among young people.
The number of people receiving treatment for cannabis use in New York has fallen by roughly 50% over the past eight years, even as cannabis-related emergency department visits across the state have more than doubled since 2016.
Albany Mayor Dorcey Applyrs on Friday vowed to fix every pothole on city streets in the next 10 days, saying she had heard the pleas from residents — drivers, cyclists and pedestrians alike — to do something about the state of the city’s roads.
In partnership with the 40-year-old NRDC and approval from the state HCR, Washington County will establish the state’s 32nd land bank with a goal of easing the rural housing crisis and bolstering economic development.
The Albany Police Department’s effort to fire an officer charged with felony drug possession for on-duty misconduct they say is unrelated to the charges, has been stalled for months because of the resignation of the city’s public safety commissioner.
The price of a gallon of gas at BJ’s Wholesale Club in Colonie on Saturday was $3.83. Drivers lined up in droves at the pump.
John Dillon Park, the Adirondacks’ sole campground designed specifically for people with disabilities, is shutting down for the upcoming summer season after state health officials determined its potable water system needs upgrades to meet state standards.
The Schenectady County Legislature’s plans to construct an aquatic center in the Electric City have sunk after updated size and cost projections made waves in the community.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
