Tag: ICE

Yikes! I’m going to need an absentee ballot!

library and school votes in ALB and statewide

I was going to be away starting on Tuesday, May 19, for the day. But I thought I could vote for the Albany school board, the library board, the school budget, and the library budget first thing in the morning, i.e., 7 a.m. But yikes! Because my travel plans changed, I’m going to need an absentee ballot! What is that process?

I need to go to the City School District of Albany headquarters, 1 Academy Park, Albany, NY, United States, 12207. This is the building northwest of Albany City Hall, south of Elk Street. And I need to go when the building is open, weekdays between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Not incidentally, New York State voters: you should check to see if there are budget and or board votes on May 19.

My next issue is deciding who to vote for in the library trustees races. Other than Sarah Macinski, I still don’t yet know which three of the nine candidates to select. I was impressed with them as a collective. I’ve asked people whose judgment I trust, and they were in similar straits. This is actually a good problem to have.   I’m voting for both budgets and both school propositions.  There will be a ZOOM candidate debate for the school board on May 18 at 6 pm, but I will have to have voted by then. 

I ALWAYS vote, dammit!

If you are voting at the polls in Albany on May 19, go to page 10 of this document for the location.

My wife said that she’s impressed by my commitment to voting. I probably said something like, “The franchise has not been available to everyone, and I’m certainly not throwing away my opportunity.” It’s also true that I believe local races are often more significant than larger races, yet participation rates are generally pathetic.  It’s simple math: other people’s apathy gives my vote more impact.

ICE discussion Thursday, May 14

Off topic, except for the venue:

Come join the NYCLU Capital Region community for an annual meeting on Thursday, May 14, at 5:30 pm in the Large Auditorium at the Albany Public Library Main Branch, 161 Washington Avenue, Albany.

The Topic is Constitutional Rights & Immigration

Led by Lauren DesRosiers, Assistant Professor and Director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the Edward P. Swyer Justice Center at Albany Law School, alongside Diego H. Alcalá Laboy, Assistant Professor at Albany Law School, this session is designed to help participants understand their rights in encounters with law enforcement or immigration officials. Topics include stops and seizures, customs and border protection, protesting and filming, as well as practical tips for being prepared in a range of scenarios.

Refreshments will be provided.  Free and open to the public.
RSVP here:

Earthword Comics combines ICE incident, FCBD

raising funds for the West Hill Refugee Welcome Center

A story in the Sunday, April 26 Times Union newspaper reminded me that Free Comic Book Day is coming up on Saturday, May 2. As a former comic store employee and a former collector long before that, it’s my way to check in.

And I always go to Earthworld Comics at 537 Central Avenue, near Manning Blvd. Earthworld was started a few years after FantaCo’s 1978 opening, but we were very civil competitors. When I would come into the store for FCBD in the 2010s and early 2020s, J.C. Glindmyer, the original owner, would treat me like royalty, which was both weird and very sweet. I was sad when he died in 2023.

His son Nick Glindmyer, who now owns the store, is doing something special for FCBD this year, tied to an ICE incident. “According to a notice posted to Facebook by the Capital Region Sanctuary Coalition, which monitors ICE activity in the region, a pair of ICE vehicles surrounded a car in front of Albany Strength Gym, next door to Earthworld, around 8:17 a.m. on March 19.  ICE agents then approached the car, and an individual who was inside the car was detained. A photo accompanying the notice shows at least two agents — one wearing an olive ‘Police’ tactical vest — interacting with a car outside the gym’s front window. 

“So we thought, ‘How can we use our platform with Free Comic Book Day to help those that might need help?’ He decided to turn the centerpiece of the shop’s biggest day of the year… into a fundraiser for another Albany neighbor, the West Hill Refugee Welcome Center.” 

Headlocked Comics

“Glindmyer said the shop will have $20 tote bags for sale on Free Comic Book Day… featuring the cover image from a comic written by Clifton Park-based creator Michael Kingston, owner of Headlocked Comics, a wrestling-oriented comics publisher. Created by artist Michel Mulipola, the image features a hulking, masked figure based on professional wrestler Brody King, wearing a costume with “Abolish ICE” across the chest. All revenue from sales of the bag will go to the West Hill refugee assistance programs.

“Locally based comic artist John Hebert, who has illustrated a long list of Marvel Comics’ series over the years, will also create an original piece of art for the event that will be auctioned off to benefit the WHRWC. Hebert will be in attendance at Earthworld throughout Free Comic Book Day.” I helped work on a comic book for FantaCo, Sold Out, with John Hebert many moons ago. 

Sometimes I weep

measles, ICE detention

When I read stories about preventable chaos in the US, I sometimes feel enraged. But sometimes I weep.

As I read that the regime has, per the LA Times [paywall likely], “reversed the U.S. government’s longstanding scientific conclusion that planet-heating pollution seriously threatens Americans, erasing a foundational piece of the country’s efforts to address climate change,” I fret, What kind of country are we leaving my daughter? I cry a bit.
.
“The repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding — a conclusion based on decades of science that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare — represents one of the biggest environmental rollbacks in U.S. history…” One of? Then I get ticked off again.
ICE detention
Democracy Now highlights “The Children of Dilley.” “That’s the title of a new ProPublica investigation into the South Texas Family Residential Center, a sprawling ICE detention complex in the town of Dilley, a few dozen miles from the southern border with Mexico. It’s run by the private prison company CoreCivic. Dilley was first opened by the Obama administration in 2014.”
It’s a place “where families describe horrific conditions inside, such as being served contaminated food, with children and parents at times finding worms in their meals. Lights are reportedly left on for 24 hours a day. [It] detains an estimated 3,500 people, more than half of them children.
“There are also mounting reports of psychological abuse by guards, some of whom have allegedly threatened families with separation. ‘Many of the children who are now being sent there are being arrested by ICE around the country, and some of them, like Ariana, have been living [in the U.S.] for years,’ says Mica Rosenberg, investigative reporter at ProPublica.”
Sadism makes me weep.
Measles
What REALLY did me in, though, was a story in The Atlantic. I don’t currently have a subscription, but there is a feature called “One Story to Read Today” that “highlights a single newly published—or newly relevant—Atlantic story that’s worth your time.”
The title was This Is How A Child Dies Of Measles by Elizabeth Bruenig. From the excerpt: “You don’t want to worry your daughter, so you try to sound calm when you call the pediatrician and describe her symptoms at a rapid clip. The receptionist responds gently, types swiftly, and then pauses. Are your children vaccinated? she asks. Her tone is flat and inscrutable, but you detect an undercurrent of judgment. You wince and tell her the truth. No, you say, no vaccines. She puts you on hold.
“While you wait, you take your son out of his high chair and wipe his runny nose with his bib. The receptionist is back. She asks if you can be at the office within the hour. In an even, professional voice, she gives you a number to call as soon as you arrive, but tells you to stay in your car. The doctor, she says, will come to you.”
And then

“You’re there in 30 minutes, unshowered and wearing sweatpants, with your daughter bundled up and shivering in her pajamas and your son fussing in his car seat. You call the office. From the car, you cannot see the sign on the pediatrician’s office door instructing patients with a list of symptoms, like your daughter’s, not to come inside. Flashes of the pandemic play back as you see the pediatrician and two nurses approaching in the rearview mirror wearing N95 masks. It hits you: This is not the flu. This is not chicken pox. This is serious.”

If that isn’t gutting enough to make me weep, there’s a twist.

This is exhausting, enervating stuff.

Feb. rambling: Complicity?

Catherine O’Hara

second-rate democracy

Non-Cooperation: When does cooperation become complicity? And what other choice is there?

Everything Is for Sale: Exploiting the 250th Anniversary of US Independence for Yet Another Grift

The EPA repealed the bedrock scientific finding that says greenhouse gases threaten human life and well-being. It means the agency can no longer regulate them.

The White House regularly circulates imagery that has been manipulated by A.I. But the photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong was different.

The Hardest Part of Fighting Fascism Comes After the Fascists Have Fallen

Dying in Broad Daylight. ‘This Is a Wake-Up Call’: Critics Disgusted as Billionaire Bezos Guts Washington Post. “Oligarchs are not the benevolent saviors media have long depicted them to be.”

Was Jeffrey Epstein running a kompromat operation for Russia?

Grid reliability projected to decline as data centers drive demand, watchdog says

A drop in CDC health alerts leaves doctors flying blind.

On Tilt. America’s new gambling epidemic

The World Factbook has sunset. It served the Intelligence Community and the general public as a longstanding, one-stop basic reference about countries and communities around the globe. [As a librarian, I used this source all of the time for info about other countries.]

Wordsmith: read especially the email of the week and limericks

The United States of consumption – Our trash and our lives, here and abroad

U.S. Employee Engagement Declines From 2020 Peak

Once called the “disease of kings,” gout is on the rise

These College Students Ditched Their Phones for a Week. Could You?

My Survivor’s Guilt

These Were the Most Popular Baby Names in 1926

Clowns + Firefighters = Police? and The Video Game System That Ran Up a $500,000 Bill, and Why is Mark Zuckerberg Suing Facebook?and The San Francisco Egg War

O’Hara
Catherine O’Hara, “Home Alone” and “Schitt’s Creek” actress, died at age 71 after a brief illness. . I especially loved her in SCTV and the mockumentaries such as Best In Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003),  and For Your Consideration (2006).  Top 10 Greatest Moments. Monologue: Musical Improvisation – Saturday Night Live.
She had previously revealed a diagnosis of dextrocardia with situs inversus, a rare congenital condition characterized by an abnormal positioning of the heart, which is mostly benign but highly peculiar. Her cause of death was pulmonary embolism, with rectal cancer as the underlying cause.
Good news

Complexly, the media company that produces Crash Course, SciShow, Eons, Bizarre Beasts, Study Hall, and more has always been privately owned by Hank and John Green. It is now a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit! “It’s never been easier to find information, but it’s also never been harder to know what to trust”. In addition to accessing more support from foundations and grants, this change means we can accept tax-deductible donations from you! You can donate to support our work at any time at complexly.org.

Doctor Driving Behind Man Saves Him After Heart Attack – Tamron Hall Show

Opportunity of a lifetime’: couple who wed at Bad Bunny Super Bowl half-time show included a registered nurse

The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming

ICE. Cold

ICE Is Watching You. Democracy dies by database.

The day before DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes stopped that termination until a pending court case worked its way through the courts. TPS holders participate in the workforce at an exceptionally high rate of 94.6%.  Haitian TPS holders pay $1.3 billion a year in taxes, and through their work in sectors that are desperate for laborers, they add about $3.4 billion to the U.S. economy annually.

Open Letter to Tech Companies: Protect Your Users From Lawless DHS Subpoenas

 

ICE plans to build mega warehouses for immigration detention spark growing concern

Illness Is Rampant Among Children Trapped in ICE’s Massive Jail in Texas

House speaker says ICE is allowed to break down your door

Bannon Calls for ICE to Engage in Voter Intimidation During the Midterms

ICE Tactics Disgrace Us — And Resemble Abuses Closer To Home Than ‘The Gestapo’

MUSIC

Gershwin First Friday Concert -First Presbyterian Church of Albany,  February 6, 2026 (music starts c 9:30) 

City of Heroes – Billy Bragg

Lyin’ and Spinnin’ (and Cheatin’ and Hidin’) – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola, and orchestra, K. 364 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Never Enough – Turnstile

Main theme for the movie The Long Goodbye by John Williams

A Sea Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams

The Memo – Joker’s Flight

Ancient Light – I’m With Her ( Sarah Jarosz · Aoife O’Donovan · Sara Watkins)
Young Americans – St. Vincent (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert)
Alone – The Cure
Water Concerto by Tan Dun
Overqualified -Durand Bernarr 

In The Clear – Billy Strings

Medley of Abba songs – Gavin Creel

Bitin’ List – Tyler Childers

Coverville 1567: The Phil Collins Cover Story III and 1568: The Chuck Negron Tribute and Three Dog Night Cover Story

Name that tune! TV theme songs (CBS Sunday Mornings)

These Musical Theatre Songs Made the Billboard Charts

Genre Delve #11: Hardcore vs. Post-Punk J. Eric Smith

“Weird Al” Yankovic Takes The Colbert Questionert

September rambling: Snollygoster

Measles and Polio Down In The Schoolyard

Word of the Day: Snollygoster –  A shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.

Pity the Nation, a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (2007)

Anti-Intellectualism Is Not a Fruit of the Spirit by Rev. Benjamin Cremer

You can’t worship God and money

A.Word.A.Day: kleptocrat – A politician or an official who uses their position to enrich themselves.

United States Boycotts UN Human Rights Review. The move sets “a terrible precedent that would only embolden dictators and autocrats and dangerously weaken respect for human rights at home and abroad.”

SCOTUS ruling allows ICE to use racial profiling in Los Angeles raids.

Israel’s Attacks on Seed Banks Destroy Millennia of Palestinian Cultural Heritage, and Israel Bombs Hamas Ceasefire Negotiating Team in Doha

Lysenkoism Comes to America: As RFK Jr. purges the CDC and cancels billions in research grants, Americans need a refresher course on what happened to Soviet biological research during the Stalin years.

Are You Ready for Measles’ Wrath?

Submit Your Official Comment Against the EPA’s Plan to Rescind Its Ability to Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions Created By Any Industry and Gut Vehicle Standards Needed to Fight Climate Change

Tax cuts helped health giants dodge billions while patients faced higher costs and denials.

FOTUS vs. Higher Education and The Baileys: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

The Attack on the Smithsonian Previews His Presidential Library

How math turned me from a D.E.I. skeptic to a supporter

Kennedy Center Ticket Sales Plummet as “MAGA Former Dancer” Takes Over Dance Program. Upcoming ballet performances are between only 4 and 19% sold.

FOTUS steals $400b from American workers

Information

Internet Archive Designated as a Federal Depository Library

The National Archives Recovers Rare Logbook from the Pearl Harbor Attack

The Return of Plundered Belongings Offers a Chance for Healing to a Grieving Lakota Community 170 Years After a Long-Forgotten Massacre

Giorgio Armani, Fashion’s Master of the Power Suit, Dies at 91

CBS News’ Mark Knoller, veteran White House correspondent, dies at 73

Davey Johnson, an Orioles infielder before becoming the manager of the Mets, including their 1986 World Series win, died at 82

High Greens, Chip Ordway– now and forever

The game was perfect. The call, more perfect. Sept. 9, 1965 -Sandy Koufax, Vin Scully

You Know More Finnish Than You Think

Reviews, Ratings, and Pointless Surveys by Seth Meyers

The Beetle Bailey book celebrates 75 years in the funny pages

Spider-Man’s first live-action TV run was on PBS, and I watched it

Now I Know: The Worst Movie Money Couldn’t Buy, The Problem With Faking a Smile, and The Human Traffic Cone?

The latter box should read: “$893 million in 30 graduated annuity payments”
MUSIC

Bottle Up Magic – Rebecca Jade (feat. Eric Darius)

Measles and Polio Down In The Schoolyard – Marsh Family parody of Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio” on RFK

In Memoriam: Mark Volman of the Turtles (1947-2025). From Stuart Mason: The masterpiece of the album The Battle of the Bands was ‘Elenore,’  simultaneously an absolutely deathless sunshine pop classic and a not particularly subtle middle finger to White Whale Records.

Supertramp co-founder, singer, and keyboardist Rick Davies died at the age of 81 after a 10-year battle with Multiple Myeloma. 5 standout Rick Davies tracks by Supertramp.

Bohemian Rhapsody, isiZulu version – Ndlovu Youth Choir

Everybody’s Song– Robert Plant and Saving Grace

Moonlight, one of Four Sea Interludes from the Benjamin Britten opera Peter Grimes

One Tiny Flower – Jeff Tweedy

Song To The Moon from Rusalka, Act I, by Antonín Dvořák

Better Broken – Sarah McLaughlin

Coverville 1547: Van Morrison Cover Story IV and 1548: The Aimee Mann Cover Story I

Dead – Sudan Archives

Big Money –  Jon Batiste

Letter To My 13-Year-Old Self and Lover Girl – Laufey

Am I Born To Die – Billy Strings, 12/13/24 ACL

Surf’s Up – The Beach Boys

The Boys Of Summer -Don Henley

Hot Fun In The Summertime – Sly & The Family Stone

September Morn – Neil Diamond

I Started A Joke – Ruby Leigh

The Power Of Love – Huey Lewis and the News

Thunderstruck + It’s a Long Way to the Top – Goddesses of Bagpipes

Burning Down The House – David Byrne ft. Olivia Rodrigo – Live at Gov Ball 2025

Is AI Ruining Music? | Dustin Ballard | TED, and AI-generated music sparks industry concern, and  AI music takes on a life of its own: Walking Away –Sadie Winters

K-Chuck Radio: Billy Joel gets pitchy and The Out-Of-Phase Stereo Series

Stairway, Denied

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