Going beyond The Times for Daily News

The New York Times is considered by many as the newspaper of record. Naturally, I try to read it as much as I can. But one of my more quirky, informative reads is the US Daily Mail, from which I offer several examples from Monday’s news feed (there will be lots of links to click on, but well worth your time). 

Paris Public “Pissoirs:” Ever have the urge to go, just a tinkle, mind you, while out in public? In Paris, it seems, men have no compunction about urinating in the street. So the city fathers are assessing a radical idea: Public street-facing urinals disguised as flower-boxes, reports The Daily Mail. For more on this fluid story, click here: https://dailym.ai/2vG2GcH

Weaponizing Planes? Is a plane the new weapon of choice for suicide and/or murder? We all have heard about the worker who stole a plane from Sea-Tac Airport and ultimately crashed to his death. But how many are familiar with the story of a disgruntled husband who tried to kill his estranged wife and her son by crashing a plane into their home? They survived. He didn’t: https://dailym.ai/2B4B4Dg

Black Like Me? Not: Here are several examples of what it is like being black. 

I wonder how many pregnant white women have had the same experience as this black lady: https://dailym.ai/2P47XmB. 

Or how many white campers encountered this reaction during a field trip to an aquarium: https://dailym.ai/2MJAXOO

Ageless in Vermont: Vermont has given us Bernie Sanders, a septuagenarian who wants to be president. Now the Green Mountain state has a 14-year-old legitimately running for governor. Check him out: https://dailym.ai/2P2mor8.

Chain Migration: First Lady Melania Trump’s parents just became U.S. citizens thanks to chain migration, an immigration rule Donald Trump and his creepy acolyte Stephen Miller want to do away with, now that their families have benefitted from it. 

If you haven’t seen it, Miller’s uncle on his mother’s side wrote an impassioned piece in Politico addressing his nephew’s cold rejection of the lifesaving rule that saved their family from extermination by Nazi Germany. Here are two links, a news story from The Daily Mail (https://dailym.ai/2B9Wijk) and the full essay from Politico (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/13/stephen-miller-is-an-immigration-hypocrite-i-know-because-im-his-uncle-219351).

Family Values: Someone needs to get it through to the Trump Administration that family values really do matter, that separating children from parents is not what America stands for. Here’s the latest outrage, as The Daily Mail headlined: “Married US gov workers told adopted Peruvian daughter will be DEPORTED: https://dailym.ai/2vFvPEP.

Bear Facts: Finally, some uplifting news—several Ussuri brown bears have been released from tiny cages in Japan after 17 years or more of captivity. They were brought to Britain to an animal sanctuary. That’s the good news, though you may wonder why they were so maltreated in the first place: https://dailym.ai/2MDvnxD. 

Sometimes, you have to look elsewhere for “all the news that’s fit to print.”

Spending Time in Vermont, Or Not

One of the continuing features of the Travel section of The New York Times is the “36 Hours” in ... series. This past Sunday’s travelogue was on Burlington, VT, home of its former mayor-current U.S. senator-presidential candidate (and former Brooklynite) Bernie Sanders.

Gilda and I visited Burlington, on the eastern rim of Lake Champlain near the border with Canada, 40 years ago. We journeyed from New Haven, CT, not to partake of the splendors of the Green Mountain state’s largest city, but rather to reconnect with close friends who had migrated to Milton, 24 miles further north of Burlington.

Vermont was known back then and even unto today to have three seasons—summer, winter and mud. Our friends Elaine and William had arrived in the spring, the season of mud. They rented a trailer anchored on a level lot, alongside Route 7, as I remember. Wanting to be somewhat self-sufficient, they thought they would cultivate the land in front of their trailer. They called a local farmer to plow the front yard.

He was young, like them, so Elaine screwed up the courage to ask if he and his wife would like to come over for dinner one night. To which he replied, in a distinctly New England drawl, “The wife and I don’t socialize.”

The chill Elaine felt that morning was downright warm compared to the reality of a Vermont winter. She woke one frigid morning with her hair frozen to the wall of the trailer.

William had grown up in cold Michigan. His home lacked indoor plumbing. Elaine, on the other hand, was raised in genteel Connecticut. They lasted a little more than a year in Vermont before returning to Connecticut.

I can’t recall ever going back to Vermont. Nothing personal. Just haven’t seen the need, not being a skier and, more importantly, the ubiquity of finding Ben & Jerry’s ice cream throughout our fair land.