I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.
For the past few weeks, I have received these wonderful missives from Bethlehem Indivisible labeled Today’s Actions. As a citizen who’s lived long enough to know voter suppression when I see it, the first item is particularly meaningful to me.
Hi, I’m a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is _______.
I am calling to urge the Congressmember to vote NO on H.R. 22, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. The SAVE Act isn’t about safeguarding elections — it’s about silencing voters. That’s wrong, and I expect my representative to oppose it.
Also, I’m really concerned about Trump’s plans to privatize the United States Postal Service. I want the Congressmember to support H.Res.70, which directs Congress to take all appropriate measures to ensure that the USPS remains independent and is not subject to privatization. Thanks. [H/T Save the Post Office Coalition]
It’s always helpful to know one’s strengths and weaknesses. One of my weaknesses is that I am no good at April Fools. Every April first, I think about writing something humorous. I’ve thrown up some groan-worthy jokes, but creating a fictitious narrative? I got nothing.
I thought about it again this year when I got a text:
E-Z Pass final reminder: You have an outstanding toll. Your toll account balance is outstanding. if you fail to pay by March 23rd, 2025 you will face penalty or legal action.
Now payment: weird URL
(Please reply Y, exit the SMS, and then open it again to activate the link, or copy the link to your Safari browser and open it.) Please settle your toll immediately after reading this message to avoid penalties for delaying the payment. Thank you for your cooperation.
I thought I would conjure up some silly story about giving them my credit card number, and they cleaned out my bank account or something, but it was lame. I got no April Fools’ game.
However, it made me want to explain why I knew it wasn’t an actual text. Besides the repeated grammar, I also have no driver’s license and haven’t driven on the New York State Thruway since the E-Z pass came into being. Also, the text number had a country code of 63, which is the Phillippines.
So tired
I realize that 2025 is exhausting because I read so many stories – FOMO for the dubiously constitutional track – that I must verify as true or false. One can’t merely dismiss specific sources. They may be accurate, even as they spin the meaning.
I go to the Federal Register page when I hear about various Executive Orders. You should know there’s a lag of a couple of days from the EO being issued and published. In this case, one can check with the White House Presidential Actions page.
Regarding DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posing in front of prisoners at that dire El Salvadorian facility:
Common Dreams – “‘This is some truly sick sh*t,’ wrote Fred Wellman, a political consultant and podcast host… John Pavlovitz, an author and pastor, wrote, ‘If hell exists, Kristi Noem is a shoo-in.’ Noem was also accused of making ‘content’ out of the imprisoned men at the facility.”
Blabber Buzz would AGREE that Noem was making “content”: “The audacity of Noem’s PSA, filmed in front of actual Tren de Aragua and MS-13 terrorists, is underscored by the fact that these are the very individuals that Democrats have fought vigorously to keep within American communities. This raises questions about the priorities of those who would rather see President Trump behind bars than these dangerous criminals.” Yeesh.
Even in accurate and non-controversial stories, one must be on the lookout for bad AI. In a story about CBS News anchor Rita Braver of CBS News retiring, the image of a law professor—which she was—was not her; it reeked of a ‘Female professor-type of a certain age.'”
To keep myself honest, I use fact-checkers such as PolitiFact and FactCheck. I recently signed up for GroundNews to “see all sides of every story on US Politics and more.” I heard about it from videos by the Randy Rainbow and the Liberal Redneck, defined as left of center, and the LegalEagle, which, Before FOTUS, looked at how movies, et al. portrayed the law. It’s useful for me.
The Strange, Post-Partisan Popularity of the Unabomber
Used by permission of Clay Bennett, Editorial Cartoonist, Chattanooga Times Free Press
“We Are Watching the Deliberate Dismantling of American Democracy” – Heather Cox Richardson with Katie Couric
Mark Evanier has posted nearly daily a series of Fact Checks over the last month that suggest members of the regime LIE regularly, especially FOTUS.
The regime seeks to starve libraries and museums of funding. Fight back with ALA.
The executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution will “eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the institute’s museums, centers, and the National Zoo in Washington.
Pete Hegseth Sent Secret War Plans to Journalist by Accident. Here Are the Texted War Plans That He Said ‘Nobody Was Texting’ on Signal. “A reminder that various administration officials lied under oath in the Senate.”
Millions face delays as administration ends Social Security phone verification. A new policy eliminating phone verification for Social Security benefits threatens to overwhelm field offices, cut off vulnerable recipients, and accelerate efforts to privatize the system.
Executive Order on Voting Denounced as ‘Authoritarian Power Grab’
Pentagon restores some webpages honoring minority service members but defends DEI purge.
Decades ago, Columbia refused to pay him $400 million. The university was looking to expand. It considered and rejected property owned by djt. He did not forget it.
People named in JFK assassination documents are not happy their personal information was released.
FOTUS has big dreams for the Kennedy Center but doesn’t seem to know what it does. His hostile takeover of the Washington, D.C., cultural institution will probably chase away the very people who like to attend shows there
Here’s What RFK Jr. Got Wrong About H5N1 Bird Flu— “This is Hollywood science, not real science,” one expert said
EPA Teases Evisceration of Scientific Research Office
FCC Chair Brendan Carr, FOTUS’ Media Pit Bull Is “Off the Leash”
How Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts Leave a Vacuum That China Can Fill: The Department of Government Efficiency is shuttering organizations that Beijing worried about most or actively sought to subvert.
IRS braces for $500bn drop in revenue as taxpayers skip filings in wake of DOGE cuts at the agency
From Catherine Rampell – WaPo:
At the IRS, employees spend Mondays queued up at shared computers to submit their DOGE-mandated “five things I did last week” emails. Meanwhile, taxpayer customer service calls go unanswered.
At the Bureau of Land Management, federal surveyors are no longer permitted to buy replacement equipment. So, when a shovel breaks at a field site, they can’t just drive to the nearest town or hardware store. Instead, work stops as employees track down one of the few managers nationwide authorized to file an official procurement form and order new parts.
At the Food and Drug Administration, leadership canceled the agency’s subscription to LexisNexis, an online reference tool that employees need to conduct regulatory research. However, some workers might not have noticed this loss yet because the agency’s incompetently planned return-to-office order this week left them too busy hunting for insufficient parking and toilet paper. (Multiple bathrooms have run out of bath tissue, employees report.)
More
The Strange, Post-Partisan Popularity of the Unabomber: When Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto appeared 30 years ago, the internet was brand-new. Now, his dark vision is finding fans who don’t remember life before the iPhone. Paragraph 173: “If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave.”
Researchers find thriving, never-before-seen ecosystem under Antarctic ice shelf: “This is unprecedented”
Author John Green on why he wrote “Everything is Tuberculosis.”
Do Adults Need a Measles Booster? A single-dose inactivated measles vaccine used from 1963 to 1967 was later found to not be as effective or long-lasting as the currently used live-attenuated vaccine, experts said.
George Foreman, Boxing Champion and Grill Spokesperson, Dies at 76
Richard Chamberlain, King of the Melodramatic Miniseries, Dies at 90. One of my sisters had a massive crush when he played ‘Dr. Kildare’
Goodbye Park City: Sundance Film Festival Heading to Colorado
My Quest to Find the Owner of a Mysterious WWII Japanese Sword. “When I was a kid, I was fascinated by a traditional katana my grandfather had brought home from Japan in 1945. Years later, I decided it was time to find the heirloom’s rightful owner.”
Rita Braver will retire from ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ after 50 years at the network
Magnet fishing is supposed to be a wholesome hobby. Why all the beef?
In 2012, when NBC had the Super Bowl, they shot a little video to precede it and promote all their shows and stars.
In 1969, Jim Henson produced several commercials for a new potato crisp called Munchos.
Now I Know: The Supreme Court Told Me I Was Wrong and Forcing Beer into Star Wars and A Miner Revolt
MUSIC
Jesse Colin Young, Youngbloods’ Frontman, Dies at 83. Get Together was one of the very few singles I ever purchased.
Herb Alpert turns 90 today. He’s still performing. I had half of his early albums, including his first, The Lonely Bull. Here’s Herb and the Tijuana Brass on that title track.
Regular Sunday Stealer Shannon W. from Moments of Introspection took on 43 questions. The Gal Herself purports to be lazy, so she pared it back to 15. Actually, 14.
1. What book are you currently reading?
60 Songs That Explain the ’90s by Rob Harvilla. Actually, I read it a while ago, but I will be rereading it because I’m doing a book review of it on June 3 at the Washington Avenue branch of the Albany Public Library.
2. Have you ever smoked?
Yes, but probably one pack in my whole life, mostly in Charlotte, NC, in the first third of 1977 when I was pretty miserable; I wrote about it here.
3. Do you own a gun?
No, and I categorically will not. On Tuesday, March 25, I attended a book review about Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution by Priya Satia. Jonathan Skinner, PhD, retired statistician and amateur classicist, reviewed it.
During the Q&A, there was a question of who in the audience would own a gun. I commented about the Good [Black] Guys With Guns phenomenon and how E.J. Bradford ended up dead for trying to do the right thing. As I wrote in 2017, the Philando Castile homicide wrecked me; I reread it, and it still does. So, hell no, it would not make me feel safer and could get me killed.
A Mounds bar. Fortunately, I only got one for Christmas and my birthday. The second fave would be York Peppermint Patties.
5. Hot dogs: yay or nay?
Yay, but I tend to only have them – with mustard, of course – on July 4 and Labor Day.
6. Favorite movie?
This is always difficult. If it is my favorite, oughtn’t I see it more often? I loved Casablanca but haven’t seen it in half a century. Here’s a list I made in October 2024. I might add Conclave, which I liked well enough to recommend it highly to my wife.
7. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Every morning, I pass the refrigerator and see bottles of wine. I have a lot of booze in the pantry, yet it’s 1% milk that I consume most often.
8. What do you drink throughout the day?
Water, ginger ale, occasionally orange juice.
9. Do you do push-ups?
No, and I never really did, especially as a kid.
10. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry?
My wedding ring, though honestly I can’t think of another.
Here are the #1 hits of 1925. But before that, I want to quote something from Joel Whitburn Presents A Century of Pop Music. “For popular music, the most historic event of the 1920s was a switch from acoustic to electric coal recordings, which followed a year of experiments by engineers of Bell Laboratories in 1924-25. Instead of the acoustic process of singers and musicians performing directly into a recording horn, they were now able to record with a condenser microphone in a spacious studio.
“With the use of a vacuum tube amplifier and an electromagnetically-powered cutting stylus, the frequency range of recorded music expanded by two and a half octaves. The Associated Glee Clubs of America’s pairing of ‘Adestes Fideles’ and ‘John Peel’ became the first electrically-recorded hit in July 1925, and within months, every major label record label had gone electric.”
The Prisoner’s Song – Vernon Dalhart (Victor), written by Guy Massey, 12 weeks at #1, gold record
Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby – Gene Austin (Victor), written by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson, “ukulele and jazz effects by Billy (‘Yuke’) Carpenter,” seven weeks at #1
I’ll See You In My Dreams – Isham Jones with Frank Bessinger (vocals) and Ray Miller’s Orchestra (Brunswick), listed as instrumental – seven weeks at #1
If You Knew Susie (Like I Know Susie) – Eddie Cantor (Columbia), written by B. G. Sylva – five weeks at #1
Harlem Globetrotters theme
Sweet Georgia Brown – Ben Bernie and His Hotel Orchestra (Vocalion), written by Bernie/Casey/Pinkard, instrumental, five weeks at #1. It shouldn’t be surprising, but I know these last four tunes, plus Tea for Two, astonishingly well, even though they are a century old.
All Alone – Al Jolson with Ray Miller and His Orchestra (Brunswick), written by Irving Berlin, five weeks at #1
Manhattan – the Knickerbockers (Columbia), from a Rodgers and Hart musical Garrick Gaieties, instrumental, four weeks at #1
Oh, How I Missed You Tonight – Ben Selvin’s Cavaliers (Columbia), instrumental, three weeks at #1; scratchy sound, unfortunately
Tea for Two – Marion Harris (Brunswick), from No, NO, Nannette, three weeks at #1
All Alone – Paul Whiteman and his orchestra (Victor), instrumental, written by Irving Berlin, three weeks at #1
All Alone – John McCormick (Victor), two weeks at #1
Oh, Katharina! – Ted Lewis and his band (Columbia), instrumental, written by Fall and Gilbert, one week at #1
Remember – Isham Jones Orchestra (Brunswick), instrumental, written by Irving Berlin, one week at #1
For the past few weeks, I have received these wonderful missives from Bethlehem Indivisible labeled Today’s Actions. As a citizen who’s lived long enough to know voter suppression when I see it, the first item is particularly meaningful to me.
It’s always helpful to know one’s strengths and weaknesses. One of my weaknesses is that I am no good at April Fools. Every April first, I think about writing something humorous. I’ve thrown up some groan-worthy jokes, but creating a fictitious narrative? I got nothing.
Regular 
Here are the #1 hits of 1925. But before that, I want to quote something from Joel Whitburn Presents A Century of Pop Music. “For popular music, the most historic event of the 1920s was a switch from acoustic to electric coal recordings, which followed a year of experiments by engineers of Bell Laboratories in 1924-25. Instead of the acoustic process of singers and musicians performing directly into a recording horn, they were now able to record with a condenser microphone in a spacious studio.