By Bonnie Fishman / San Francisco Bay Area Father’s Day is one of my favorite “Hallmark” holidays. It’s just after schools let out and before the kids are off to camp or their summer activities. It’s often celebrated outside on the deck, patio or in the yard. These outdoor meals are great for the cook too because a typical menu includes something hot off the grill or out of the oven, accompanied by room temperature sides. Easy-peasy to serve. Don’t forget the disposable plates and, hey, this is almost a holiday for moms! What I love most about Father’s Day is the true honoring of our fathers, whether they’re still with us on earth or just in our hearts. I reflect on who my father was and how he influenced me throughout my life. I know I speak for many of us when I say that our fathers were among the most significant people in our lives. They set the tone for the household, guided us, offered stability, a great wealth of knowledge and unconditional love. Unfortunately, this is not true in all families. Fortunately and gratefully, I had a dad who was an amazing man. My dad, Mickey (Milton) Fishman was the youngest of four remarkable brothers, all bright and very athletic. Their father emigrated from Russia with nothing and managed to build a successful insurance company. My father and his brothers grew up in a lavish home in Detroit. Plenty of food, a car to drive, summer camp in New York, and a good college education after high school. Fact: the Fishman brothers, to this day, were the only four brothers in the history of the University of Michigan who all lettered in sports. Unfortunately, after the Depression, their father fell on hard times, like many others, and Mickey, being the last to leave home, had to pay his way through college by washing dishes at the Michigan Union, a meeting place in Ann Arbor, Mich., with restaurants and student services, while playing pool for money on the side. After graduation, he enlisted in the Navy during WWII, attended midshipman school at Notre Dame, and was off to the Pacific arena as a lieutenant. His brother, Herman, his closest friend, was fighting in Asia. Before they left, they made a pact to build a boys’ sports summer camp in Northern Michigan. My dad was a dreamer and he and Herman made it happen. From 1946 until 1966, they successful ran Camp Michigama adding a girls’ camp, Michigama Hill, in 1952. Dad had four girls, so where were they going to go to camp?! Over the years, he was Uncle Mickey to hundreds of city kids who waited all school year to come to camp. For the remaining nine months of the year, Dad would hustle steel and scrap metal and sell anything that wasn’t nailed down. He would go to auctions and then weird stuff would show up at our house. We had an enormous billiard table with solid wood legs the size of easy chairs. We had a full-blown 6-foot shiny stainless steel soda fountain in our basement, outfitted with a whole collection of banana split boats, soda glasses, and sundae bowls. You get the picture. Mickey was generous to a fault. He gave away money like it grew on trees, even when he didn’t have much. His bank account went up and down like a roller coaster. When he was at a low point in his life, he remained positive that things would turn around. If one of his daughters had a great idea, he would support it to the nth degree. Dad even gave me his last dollars to open my first bakery because he believed in my ability to succeed. I inherited some wonderful traits from my dad. I got his athletic genes–he taught me to golf and I love swimming like he did, I’m a good problem solver, I have a positive outlook and am even-tempered. Not so gratefully, I got his bad feet and his ridiculously impatient nature. In the spirit of honoring our father's, I’m offering one of the few dishes my dad could cook: Baked Pizza Bread. It uses ground beef, which was all too common for soldiers returning from WWII. Ground beef was a staple for them and upon their return from service in the ’40s, it became quite popular. I don’t know why this recipe is called Baked Pizza Bread because it doesn’t really taste like pizza. At the end of my recipe, I offer other combinations of seasonings and ingredients. Let us know here at The Insider how you honor your father. Happy Father’s Day! Baked Pizza Bread Yield: 6-8 servings 1 1/2 lb. ground beef (or ground turkey or mixed) 1 lg. egg 3/4 c. finely diced onions 2/3 c. sour cream or Greek yogurt 1/2 c. bread crumbs 1/4 c. catsup 1 1/2 tsp. salt 1 tsp. dry mustard 1/4 tsp. black pepper 1 c. shredded sharp cheddar cheese 1 1lb. French or Italian bread catsup for garnish shredded cheddar cheese for garnish Mix together the egg, onions, sour cream, crumbs, catsup and seasonings. Add the ground meat. Mix together with your hands until incorporated but not overworked. Fold in cheddar cheese. Add the ground meat. Reserve. Preheat oven to 350°. Slice the bread in half horizontally keeping the top and bottom pieces as even as possible. Lay out 2 large sheets of foil. Place a piece of bread on each foil, cut side up. Divide the meat between the 2 halves, spreading evenly over the surface. Cradle each bread with the foil so the crust is covered but the top is exposed. Spread a thin layer of catsup on the meat. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes. Sprinkle on additional cheese. Bake for another 15 minutes. Cut on the diagonal crosswise. Variations: Italian pizza: 2 minced garlic cloves 1 tsp. oregano 1/2 tsp. basil Substitute 1/2 c. grated Parmesan for the cheddar cheese Top with marinara sauce or pizza sauce, and grated mozzarella TexMex: 2 minced garlic cloves 1-2 minced jalapeño peppers 1 tsp. cumin 1 tsp. chili powder 1/2 tsp. oregano Top with mild tomato salsa and shredded Monterey Jack cheese Bonnie Fishman attended the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London. Later, she owned and operated Bonnie’s Patisserie in Southfield, Mich. and Bonnie’s Kitchen and Catering in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has taught cooking for over 35 years and created hundreds of recipes. She is now living in Northern California.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 87 By Laurence Lerman / New York City If ever there were a time to review Hollywood veteran Tom Cruise’s 40-year career, it’s now. A breath away from turning 60 (on July 3), Cruise has now appeared in 42 films as a lead, beginning with Risky Business in 1983. His movies have grossed over $10 billion domestically, with 10 of them reaching $200 million or more, according to industry site IndieWire. Following its record-setting $156 million domestic gross over the four-day Memorial Day Weekend, Cruise’s new film, Top Gun: Maverick, rang up $86 million at the domestic box office during its second weekend in release, bringing its total North American gross to just under $300 million. The Joseph Kosinski-directed Maverick is the strongest domestic box office launch Cruise has ever seen, now standing at $550 million worldwide. And the way it’s looking, the film is poised to top the $792 million mark set by 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout and become Cruise’s top-grossing movie ever around the globe. Cruise’s rise in the industry began at about the same time that Hollywood began developing big-budget, large-scale franchises—the second installments in George Lucas’s Star Wars and Indiana Jones series and Cruise’s Risky Business were all products of the early ’80s. Cruise had a couple of misfires immediately after his Risky Business breakout (1983’s All the Right Moves and Ridley Scott’s 1985 fantasy Legend), but then came Top Gun, his fourth feature as a leading man, and Cruise was a certified star. By that time, in the mid-’80s, a handful of sequels and franchises began to firmly take hold, including entries in the Rocky, Rambo, Karate Kid and Star Trek cycles. Top Gun could have been one of those projects in the late ’80 as well, but Cruise waited 36 years to make its follow-up. Indeed, it took nearly 15 years and more than a dozen films before Cruise made his first-ever sequel, 2000’s Mission: Impossible II, the follow-up to his 1996 original, which also happened to be the first film he produced. Generally regarded as the weakest film in the series, M:I-2 was still a huge global hit. It’s at this point, when Cruise the actor added “Cruise the producer” to his filmography, that he began to take a more steadfast, guiding hand in plotting out his career. Of course, Cruise does have his Mission: Impossible franchise of six films (with two more slated for the summers of 2023 and 2024), which have generated more than $1.6 billion in domestic box office to date. But the bulk of his box office success comes from stand-alone films. Cruise’s other attempts at franchise-building later in his career—2012’s Jack Reacher and 2016’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back; and 2017’s The Mummy—didn’t generate enough heat and business to spawn extended cycles.) Cruise’s general avoidance of franchises and deftness at a broader spectrum of genres and styles definitely sets him apart from a younger generation of stars. While we’ve seen Cruise in dramatic, romantic, action, thriller and comedic roles, the younger actors have established their marketability in the comic book, fantasy and sci-fi franchises that have thrived over the past two decades. (Hollywood’s current constellation of stars named Chris—Pratt, Pine and Evans—are a good example of this.) Though often regarded as a control freak about his project choices, producing and press efforts, Cruise never appeared to back down from collaborating with a host of talented filmmakers. This was particularly the case during the first half of career, where he worked with boldfaced names ranging from Francis Ford Coppola (The Outsiders, 1983), Martin Scorsese (The Color of Money, 1986), Barry Levinson (Rain Man, 1988) and Oliver Stone (Born on the Fourth of July, 1989) to Sidney Pollack (The Firm, 1993), Brian De Palma (Mission: Impossible, 1996) and Steven Spielberg (2002’s Minority Report and 2004’s War of the Worlds). Cruise also crashed a masked orgy in Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), knocked off a dozen shady Los Angelenos as a brutal hitman in Michael Mann’s Collateral (2004) and collaborated with Hollywood’s most successful filmmaking sibs, the Scott brothers (Ridley in Legend and Tony in Top Gun and 1989’s Days of Thunder). He even gave actor/director Ben Stiller a spin as hairy-forearmed record executive Les Grossman in 2008’s Tropic Thunder, Cruise’s funniest role since he lip-synced in his underwear in Risky Business. It’s also worth noting that during the actor’s younger years, there was more of a focus on pairing up rising stars with veteran performers. Cruise held his own alongside such titans as Paul Newman (The Color of Money), Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man), Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men, 1992) and Gene Hackman (The Firm). And a little later on, in the lesser-seen 2007 war drama Lions for Lambs, he was one part of a triumvirate with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. But that was then and looking at those years now, it feels like that they were an extended drumroll for Cruise’s solo act as a high-flying superstar for the past two decades. He is also a superstar who hearkens back to a time when A-list players were a bit more reticent about cranking up the volume on their personal lives, worried about overexposure. Even with a pair of high-profile marriages behind him and his association with the controversial Scientology movement, Cruise has never been one to offer himself to the public via extended interviews or regular talk show appearances, let alone the ubiquitous Instagram, Twitter and TikTok presence that is de rigueur for so many of today’s media personalities. Cruise is primarily out there when he’s promoting his latest films, like the John Waynes and Cary Grants and Henry Fondas and Paul Newmans of years past. The only contemporary star who appears to have a comparable blackout on that kind of media saturation might be Leonardo DiCaprio, who has been outspoken about his politics, while Cruise says nary a word. And so, here we are, with Tom Cruise on the brink of his most successful film ever. The latest word is that Cruise is set to collaborate once again with filmmaker Doug Liman, whom he last worked with on the sci-fi thriller Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and the underseen action-crime comedy American Made (2017). Reportedly, the two, both pilots, are planning an action-adventure film that will be shot in outer space and include the involvement of both NASA and Elon Musk’s Space X. Leave it to Tom Cruise to attempt to fly ever higher. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

By Carly Mitchell / New York City (The author, a public-school teacher, is using a pseudonym for professional reasons) June is here and teachers throughout New York City (or at least the honest ones), are breathing a sigh of relief and preparing themselves for that sweet, sweet, six-letter word: SUMMER. This year has been a doozy as both students and teachers have learned to reacclimate to the ‘normal’ school routine (aka being in a classroom instead on a Zoom screen). For me, as a seventh-grade English teacher, this school year has had its ups, its downs, and its in-betweens. So, I figured it might be fun to take a moment to reflect upon my own performance during the past 10 months. What better way than to give myself a report card? It’s only fair. Here goes nothing! Preparedness and Organization: B+ You figure out pretty quickly as a teacher that you should be prepared for anything. And that means anything. Whether this means an extra assignment for the student who finishes five minutes into the task that is supposed to take at least 30 minutes (there’s always one!), an explanation for an odd question (there are always many), or an observation from an administrator the day before a break (when behavior is typically the most outlandish), you know you must be ready for whatever comes your way. I give myself a B+ because while I feel I am usually pretty prepared in terms of my lessons and planning, I do think I could be just a tad more organized. Let’s just say I have found myself in what I refer to as a ‘grading crisis’ on more than one occasion. Emphasis on the word crisis. Patience: B+ Ahh. Patience. A tricky concept that comes easily some days, but not so easily on others. I almost gave myself a B in this department, but then I thought about the number of times today I repeated the same directions (over and over and over and over– you get the point) and pretty much every other day of the year. If I can extend grace to my students on a daily basis, I can do the same for myself. So B+ it is. Multitasking: A- I can teach a lesson on figurative language to a class of squirming seventh graders, write a pass to the nurse’s office for a student who has fallen out of his chair, respond to an email from my principal AND sip my coffee all at the same time. Okay, maybe not the coffee part, but everything else still goes. Fostering Student Relationships: A It’s simple: if you want to have a successful year, you must have a good rapport with your students. If you want a hellish year, then do the opposite. But who wants that? We teach because we love kids, so relationship building and maintaining an environment of understanding and mutual respect is imperative. Now this is not to say that everything is always sunshine and daisies. I have had my fair share of “get outside and wait for me in the hallway!” moments, but at the end of the day we forgive one another and move on. Like I always say to my students, the outside world is hard enough, so let’s try our best to get along and support one another while we are in school. Corny? Yes. But true? Also, yes! Fostering Co-worker/Administration Relationships: A This job is tough enough. You should be able to rely on your co-workers and your administration for support and of course share a few laughs along the way. I am fortunate to work with some of the finest teachers I have ever met, and for this I am perpetually grateful. Classroom Decor: B Yes, I have fantastic student work hanging on my wall. Yes, currently their ekphrastic poems (poetry inspired by art) are displayed. And yes,there are inspirational posters tacked to my bulletin boards. But remember that grading crisis business I mentioned earlier? Yeah, sometimes those piles of paper get in the way of the feng shui. Current Energy Level: C Ok, if this were my first quarter report card (the first three months of the year) I would be a little kinder to myself. But it’s June and if I am going to be totally transparent, there is not enough coffee in the world to keep my energy levels up at this point. Cheers, anyone? There you have it, folks: my final report card for the 2021-2022 school year. Admittedly, it is fairly subjective. Perhaps I should ask my students to take a look? On second thought, maybe that’s not the best idea… Carly Mitchell (a pseudonym) is a public-school teacher in Brooklyn N.Y. who loves to learn, to educate, and to expose the hypocrisy of New York City politicians.

By Jessie Seigel / Washington, D.C. The proverbial chickens might finally be coming home to roost. The first of eight public hearings by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was televised on virtually every U.S. network in prime time (with the belligerent exception of Fox News) on Thursday (June 9). Upwards of 20 million people in this nation watched it. And unlike most congressional hearings in recent years, this one promised a series that will present the results of a truly collaborative, bipartisan search for truth. In that way, this first hearing was historic. I’ll bet House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is kicking himself for decreeing that Republicans should boycott participation on the committee because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to let him place extremists like Wisconsin Rep. Jim Jordan on it. By boycotting, McCarthy lost any opportunity for his party to use its committee membership to obstruct the investigation. And since two fair-minded Republicans—Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger—bucked their party to join the committee, their prominent participation put the lie to any Republican argument that the committee’s work has been a partisan Democratic witch hunt. McCarthy’s miscalculation is the nation’s gain. An Overview of the Committee’s Scheduled Hearings In the first hearing, the committee chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson (a Democrat) and vice chair Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney (a Republican) presented what amounted to a pitch-perfect opening statement for a criminal prosecution of Donald J. Trump. Thompson stated that Trump was at the center of the January 6 conspiracy. Cheney, who conducted the larger share of the presentation, forcefully declared that Trump “summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack.” But as Cheney described, the conspiracy began long before January 6 and involved numerous, calculated illegal maneuvers to retain power, of which the attack was only one prong. Setting a strong foundation for the series of hearings, Cheney stated: “Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power. In our hearings, you will see evidence of each element of this plan.” Cheney enumerated the countless times Trump was informed by aides and advisors that he had lost the election. This included former Attorney General Bill Barr, shown in his devastating better-late-than-never video testimony, stating: “I repeatedly told the President in no uncertain terms that I did not see evidence of fraud, you know, that would have affected the outcome of the election.” Barr said he told Trump that the fraud allegations were “bullshit.” This was followed by astounding video testimony of Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, accepting Barr’s assessment that election fraud claim was totally bogus: ‘It affected my perspective,” she acknowledged. ‘I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he said.” After the videos, Cheney continued: “As you will see in the hearings to come, President Trump believed his supporters at the Capitol, and I quote, ‘were doing what they should be doing.’ This is what he told his staff as they pleaded with him to call off the mob, to instruct his supporters to leave.” In addition, Cheney said that Trump not only balked at putting out anything to call off the attack but, shockingly--fully aware of the rioters’ chants to “hang Mike Pence”--the former President responded … “maybe our supporters have the right idea” and Mike Pence “deserves’ it.” Cheney explained that the second hearing will address Trump’s knowing “massive” effort to spread the lie that the election had been stolen from him, which provoked the violence on January 6. Indeed, though Cheney did not mention it in her introductory statement, Trump began spreading and thus seeding the lie of election fraud many months before the November election. The third hearing will address Trump’s corrupt plans to replace his Attorney General in order to clear the way for Trump to use the Department of Justice (DOJ) to spread his “false stolen election claims.” Cheney quoted Trump, before the January 6 coup attempt, telling his top DOJ officials: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” When the top Justice Department officials would not go along, Trump tried to elevate a minor DOJ attorney, Jeff Clark, to the role of Acting Attorney General. His reason? Clark was willing to send a letter to multiple states falsely claiming that DOJ had identified fraud concerns, and urging those states to withdraw their official, lawful electoral votes for Biden. It was only when the DOJ’s senior leadership and the White House Counsel threatened to resign that this illegal action was prevented from occurring. Cheney promised that this third hearing will also address the role of some congressmen who sought Presidential pardons from Trump for their part in attempting to overthrow the 2020 election. The fourth hearing will address Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count electoral votes on January 6. Pence’s general counsel and other witnesses will explain that Pence and his staff informed Trump “over and over again that what he was pressuring Mike Pence to do was illegal.” The fifth hearing will present evidence that President Trump corruptly pressured state legislators and election officials to change election results. This will include additional details about Trump’s call to Georgia officials urging them to “find” 11,780 votes that did not exist, as well as his efforts to get states to rescind certified electoral slates, and efforts to instruct various Republican state officials to forge false electoral slates certifying that Trump won states he had actually lost. The sixth and seventh hearings will address details, with both live and video testimony by White House staff members, of how Trump summoned the violent mob and directed them to march on the U.S. Capitol. In addition, Cheney underscored the fact that on December 18, 2020, General Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and others, met at the White House, where they discussed having the military seize voting machines and potentially rerun elections. Little more than an hour after they left the White House, the former President tweeted of January 6: “Be there. Will be Wild.” After summarizing the mountain of evidence to come, Cheney staunchly pronounced to the members of her party who, despite all this evidence, continue to back Trump: “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” In addition to the committee’s riveting introductory statements, two witnesses testified live. Capitol Police Officer Carolyn Edwards was on the front line on January 6. Though severely injured in the melee, she continued, with her fellow officers, to protect the Capitol. Edwards, who is experienced in crowd control, described what the Capitol Police faced in dire terms: “It was carnage. It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw,” Edwards said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle. Documentarian Nick Quested had been filming the Proud Boys on January 6 and in the days prior. The Proud Boys were the first to breach the Capitol. Quested’s testimony revealed that the group, 200 to 300 strong, were already marching to the Capitol at 10:30 am—almost two hours before Trump’s noon speech at his rally, located far from the Capitol. Quested said that he found this odd since he thought he was there to cover the Proud Boys’ attendance at the rally. Confirming the 10:30 am time with Mr. Quested, Chairman Thompson postulated that the Proud Boys may have been scouting the Capitol to find weak points for their attack and were coordinating so as to time their attack with the beginning of the joint session of Congress, at which the Electoral College count was to take place. Will There Now, Finally, Be Accountability? Despite all the evidence the committee has accumulated and will presumably lay out in detail in its subsequent hearings, congressional power to act is limited. Congress cannot prosecute anyone. Without prosecution for crimes exposed, there is no accountability. And if no serious price is paid for this failed coup, there will be another. This is a lesson our leaders should have learned long ago. The failure to prosecute President Richard Nixon for his attempt in the Watergate scandal to steal our democracy emboldened those who followed in his nefarious footsteps to feel that they could, move, inch by inch—and then, when no one stopped them, leap by leap--toward autocracy. Ronald Reagan got away with the Iran-Contra scandal with no repercussions. And under President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney promoted the concept of the unitary executive—which amounts to presidential dictatorship. Bush senior advisor Karl Rove reportedly said, “We create our own reality.” These all were steps on the road to Donald Trump. After the two-hour hearing, when asked whether Donald Trump should be prosecuted, Dan Goldman, formerly the lead majority counsel in the first impeachment inquiry against Trump, declared on MSNBC that Liz Cheney’s preview of the hearings and witnesses showed that Trump knew exactly what he was doing. Said Goldman, “What Trump should be seeing are handcuffs.” Neal Katyal, former Acting U.S. Solicitor General in the Obama Administration, said emphatically, that if it was anyone else, there would already have been a criminal investigation and if we don’t prosecute for this, what do we prosecute for? But Attorney General Merrick Garland—the head of DOJ, the only federal agency with the power to prosecute—has been positively sluggish when it comes to taking any action against those at the top who orchestrated the attempted coup. Actions that the DOJ is currently taking or contemplating against anyone but those physically at the Capitol on January 6—anyone who planned the coup—appear to be buried in a deep, dark hole. In a speech this year on January 5, delivered to DOJ employees, Garland pledged: "The Justice Department remains committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law – whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy." He added, "We will follow the facts wherever they lead." But Garland did not state a commitment to pursue those who criminally tried to overturn the election during the days and months before January 6 and after. As New Jersey Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski told USA Today back in January, “Blaming Jan. 6th just on the rioters is like blaming 9/11 just on the hijackers. The [DOJ] investigation has to also focus on who mobilized and financed and encouraged that act of political violence.” Garland also stated: "We follow the physical evidence. We follow the digital evidence. We follow the money. But most important, we follow the facts – not an agenda or an assumption. The facts tell us where to go next." Well, Mr. Garland, the facts the committee is unearthing are screaming where to go next. Although Liz Cheney noted that the DOJ is also currently working with cooperating witnesses, it appears, Mr. Garland, that the House January 6 committee is doing your job for you. What is holding you back from an aggressive investigation and, where crimes have been unearthed, vigorous prosecution? If it is fear of looking political, you should note that failure to prosecute criminality because of the suspect’s position is itself a political act. Timidity about how it will look is no excuse for failing in your duty. If you fall back on the same lame excuse President Gerald Ford gave for pardoning Nixon before any prosecution could be initiated—that is, so the country can heal—you will, as Ford did, be sweeping the attempted coup under the rug. And your inaction will be responsible for the next coup—the one that probably will be successful. Political columnist Jessie Seigel had a long career as a government attorney in which she honed her analytic skills. She has also twice received an Artist’s Fellowship from the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for her fiction, and has been a finalist for a number of literary awards. In addition, Seigel is an associate editor at the Potomac Review, a reviewer for The Washington Independent Review of Books, and a dabbler in political cartoons at Daily Kos. Of this balance in her work between the analytic and the imaginative, Seigel jokes, “I guess my right and left brains are well-balanced.” More on and from Seigel can be found at The Adventurous Writer, https://www.jessieseigel.com.

By John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. The signs are ominous for Democrats. Pundits, polls and primary results all signal a rout in November’s midterm elections. The incumbent president’s party is expected to lose support for the 19th time in the 20 midterms held since 1946, and surrender its majorities in Congress for the fourth time since 2006. That will effectively neutralize President Biden for the rest of his term. The consequences for America’s future could be disastrous. Rising inflation and crime will very likely prove to be the decisive factor in the Republican Party’s assault on our democracy. It’s hard to see how the economy and quality of life issues won’t be top-of-the-list for many voters. Never mind that the GOP has no detailed plan that I am aware of for curbing inflation, fixing supply chain problems or addressing social needs (good affordable health care, anyone?) other than its old standbys of tax cuts and more drilling for oil (which will be sold on the world market where OPEC can keep prices high by cutting its own production). But Republicans are in the enviable position of simply being able to complain and blame and let public concern with pocketbook issues return them to power. There was a time when the GOP would have already committed political suicide for all but banning abortion, never mind trying to overturn the 2020 election by dubious means. But this is a different and very scary era when a major party can safely embrace racists, fascist militia groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, whack-a-doodle QAnon conspiracy theories, and highly questionable candidates like Senatorial would-bes Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz and House loose cannon Marjorie Taylor Greene. Unless the House Select Committee’s public hearings — which began by underscoring President Trump’s central role in the January 6 insurrection, that House Republicans sought pardons for their activities, and the brutal violence Trump’s followers were (and likely still are) willing to commit— succeed in moving the public’s concern needle and keep it there until November, and the GOP is punished at the polls and in court, a dangerous precedent will have been set. Peaceful transfers of power will no longer be assured if bad actors know they can cross our legal and traditional limits with impunity. As Trump famously boasted, he could shoot someone on Fifth Ave. and not lose any voters. After all we now know about his attempted coup and highly questionable behavior while in office, is there really anything a president can do that will bring the hammer of justice down upon him? The legal process could take many years and finding an impartial jury is likely impossible. That means voters will have to do the heavy lifting. One major problem is emotional fatigue. After being shocked or angered, humans are prone to eventually becoming indifferent to even horrifying things like war and terrible suffering. We’ve already been bombarded by Jan. 6 revelations for more than a year. It’s hard to imagine what will stir the nation to act when events like the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are inevitably fading into the news cycle. Meanwhile, pain at the gas pump and in stores will be constantly present for an indefinite period. We’re a materialistic society that likes its comforts and indulgences. We resent having to live on a budget. It’s very likely that little else will matter to key voters in November. It’s obvious that the majority on the right will not be swayed by anything the Jan. 6 hearings reveal. The left is already convinced that women’s rights and our democracy are under grave assault. That leaves the fate of the nation in the hands of the independents who played a critical role in Biden’s victory in 2020. How much will swing voters who want an economic fix really fret about the Republican focus on things like Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ+ controversies that will likely dominate the party’s agenda? The temptation to give the GOP a fresh crack at inflation will be strong even without specifics on how lower prices can be achieved. Politics is about raw emotion now, not dry facts, details and careful thought. There is great danger in the belief or casual acceptance that the Jan. 6 siege and the plot to overturn the 2020 election are merely politics as usual and political discourse, and it is time to focus on more pressing matters like the economy and crime. An NBC News poll has found that Trump is more popular now than when he left office and a majority of Americans (55%) believe he was only partially responsible for the insurrection. This is a far cry from nation’s reaction to Watergate, which I still remember vividly. (I was 14 when the story broke.) The mere threat of impeachment was enough to drive Nixon to resign and there were no sustained, reality-defying attempts to deny what was on the recordings of the President or what his aides said in their testimony during hearings that were widely and closely watched. Yes, I knew Republicans who felt Nixon was hounded from office, but there was a widespread concern across the political spectrum that he and his allies who committed the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters had crossed a totally unacceptable line. Trump and his allies in the GOP have gone miles beyond it and now all bets are off. It was once unthinkable that so many in this country would tolerate and even defend Trump and his party’s outrageous, childish, unhinged behavior, bald-faced hypocrisy, barely concealed nods to racism, scandals, and likely illegal behavior. Americans used to have much higher standards for their elected officials, who at least went through the motions of maintaining some semblance of honor and integrity. A large segment of America’s population actually believes (or is too afraid to say otherwise) that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump even though explanations of exactly how it was swiped keep changing and multiple investigations since George W. Bush’s administration have not uncovered any sign that voter fraud exists on a significant level nationally. Adhering to the belief that Trump was robbed, despite a glaring lack of legally recognized evidence, is now a litmus test for candidacy and inclusion in the GOP. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have become party pariahs for their roles on the Jan. 6 committee. And of the 35 House Republicans who voted for a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot, 10 have resigned, retired or been defeated in primaries. Our society has a very short attention span. A lot can happen between now and the mid-terms, and if the economy remains sour, the GOP may well pull off the most brazen, consequential acts in American political history. The bottom line is if enough voters aren’t sufficiently concerned about accountability, the GOP could be returned to power and lock itself in for an extended period of revenge politics. Probes of Trump and the Jan. 6 plot will surely end. Pardons will likely be issued to those who have been convicted of participating in the siege. Investigations of prominent Democrats will begin. Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz have already threatened to impeach Biden. There’s also the wild card of the strict new voter laws in 19 Republican states, such as Georgia. Right-wing media crowed that turnout for recent primaries was well above expectations, thus giving lie to charges of voter suppression. But primaries are different from general elections when the stakes for each party are much higher and there is more incentive to interfere. I won’t be shocked if in November, and especially later in 2024, we see widespread claims of voter obstruction, harassment and dubious denial as well as charges of fraud, not to mention litigation, if Democrats win. Do you really think Republicans will return to recognizing the legitimacy of their opponents? As if warming up, David Perdue filed a lawsuit, since dismissed, that claimed his landslide defeat in Georgia’s May 24 Republican gubernatorial primary was the result of hanky-panky. What would he and the GOP say and do if he’d lost the general election race for governor to a Democrat? Democrats are a tough sell to voters, especially young ones (less than a million between the ages of 18 and 34 watched the committee’s first televised hearing on network TV, frustrated by the party’s inability to do much since retaking Congress and the White House two years ago, but why do Republicans deserve to be rewarded after all they have been doing to block needed legislation and violate our Constitution and undermine democracy? How can we ever be sure again that our votes will really count when so much subterfuge is likely to happen again? America needs at least two rational political parties to keep each other honest and focused on addressing the pressing needs of citizens. We could go a long way toward achieving that by bringing the GOP to its senses with a rout in November, legally punishing the extremists for whom power by any means necessary is the ultimate goal, and by removing the vast sums of special interest money that pollute and corrupt our political process. I don’t see how those things will happen, and that makes the upcoming midterms so fraught. Our democratic system needs to be protected, bolstered and improved. Without it, who knows what life in America will be like in the foreseeable future? Russia’s oligarchic kleptocracy should give you a rough idea. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Bonnie Fishman / San Francisco Bay Area “Would you like a little milk?” Now there’s a loaded question! When I was in kindergarten in the ‘50s, my mom would put a nickel in my red leather single coin purse to buy milk at lunch. Chocolate or white. Today, you practically need a menu of types of milk. Let’s talk about cow’s milk first: skim, 1/2%, 1%, 2%, whole, and lactose-free, in both 2% and whole. Don’t get me started with the rest of the “menu”: almond, almond with vanilla, rice, oat, soy, cashew, coconut, and goat. Did someone say camel or yak?! Not common in the USA…yet. You can tell what part of the country you are in by frequenting different Starbucks, as I have been driving 2,500 miles back and forth along I-40 or I-80 from Michigan to California for eight years. Starbucks has been a beacon of friendliness, familiarity, and strong coffee. I always get just coffee, nothing fancy. In California, the condiment station has half-and-half, milk, low-fat milk, soy, and almond milk. In Missouri, in the middle of less-populated areas, you get half-and-half, period. When did all the milk varieties become available and why? According to Practical Gastroenterology Journal at the University of Virginia, “The increasing popularity of nondairy milks can be attributed to many factors. More and more people are consuming nondairy alternatives, whether due to an allergy, lactose intolerance or adherence to a vegan/plant-based diet.” I remember in the ‘90s when there was a big push away from cow’s milk for several years. They said it made your sinuses stuffy, among other side effects. I’d had stuffy sinuses for years. “I think I’ll try it!” For six months, I completely eliminated milk products from my diet. The result? Besides permanently getting used to drinking my coffee black, there was no change in my health. But that’s me. You’ll have to decide for yourselves. With the call for dairy alternatives came all of the plant-based milk substitutes to meet consumer demands. Have you been in a grocery store or specifically a Whole Foods Market and just stared at the milk aisle? Your head will spin with options. Most cow’s milk sold in this country is either pasteurized or ultra-pasteurized. Not every state allows the sale of raw milk straight from the cow. Here in California, we have several of these dairies scattered throughout the state. San Martin Milk Company, here in Santa Clara County, is certified by the state to sell raw milk right from the farm. These facilities are immaculately clean and frequently inspected. Raw milk has the benefits of natural protein, enzymes, and nutrients. It is great for making your own cheese and butter. The downside is that it can carry bacteria such as Salmonella or E. coli. Infants, pregnant women, older adults, and people with compromised immune systems should probably not take the chance. As a matter of fact, the CDC cautions consumers about drinking it. This is a personal choice and I would only get the milk from a certified, inspected farm. If you don’t have access to raw milk, seek out pasteurized instead. Ultra-pasteurized milk lasts for months unopened; pasteurized milk for about 10 days; and raw milk has to be sold within 48 hours of milking and has a shorter shelf life. A side note: you will not be able to make your own cheese (or whipped heavy cream, for that matter) if you use ultra-pasteurized milk products. When I lived in London in 1975 while attending cooking school, I lived in a flat with six people, all from the British Commonwealth. We would get milk deliveries a couple of times a week. Since the milk was unpasteurized, the fatty cream would rise to the top of the bottle. The first people out of bed each morning would scrape off that top layer for their tea. We’d end up with a bunch of “headless” bottles of milk. It made me chuckle at how silly it seemed at the time. This was a case of first come, first served. I often thought about share and share alike. I stayed out of the fray as tea wasn’t important to me. I think the best part of having milk substitutes is that we can now cook and bake dishes that we didn’t have the ability to create before because of dietary issues and philosophical ideologies. My husband Bob, who has been lactose-intolerant most of his life, is thrilled to be able to eat milk-based pastas and desserts. This week, I’m offering a very creamy dessert, rice pudding, which Bob thought he would never have again. What I love about this recipe is its immense versatility, both as to milk choices and flavorings. Choose the milk of your choice and switch up the spices, dried fruits, and nuts to whatever feels right. Sometimes, I even use leftover plain rice from the Chinese restaurant and it works great! Let us know here at The Insider what combination you come up with. And keep in mind what Ogden Nash wrote: “The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk.” Creamy Rice Pudding with Cardamom Yield: 4-6 servings 1 1/2 c. water 3/4 c. Arborio or other short grain rice 2 c. milk of your choice, divided 1/3 c. sugar 1/4 tsp. salt 4 cardamom pods or 1/4 tsp. ground 1/8 tsp. fresh grated nutmeg 1 lg. egg, beaten 1/2 tsp. vanilla 2/3 c. golden raisins 1/3 c. toasted unsalted pistachios or slivered almonds cinnamon for dusting Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan. Add the rice. Bring to a boil; turn down to a simmer and cover. Cook for 20 minutes. Add 1 1/2c. milk, sugar, salt, cardamom, and nutmeg to the rice. Bring to a boil; turn down to a gentle boil. Stir often and cook until the mixture is creamy, about 15-20 minutes. Scramble the egg, 1/2 c. remaining milk, and vanilla together in a bowl. Add about one cup of hot rice mixture to the bowl, so as to temper the egg. Slowly stir the bowl contents into the saucepan. Add the raisins and nuts. Continue cooking over moderate heat, stirring the whole time for 2 minutes. Pour the rice pudding into a serving dish or individual portions. Dust with pure cinnamon. Serve at room temperature or chilled. Bonnie Fishman attended the Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London. Later, she owned and operated Bonnie’s Patisserie in Southfield, Mich. and Bonnie’s Kitchen and Catering in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. She has taught cooking for over 35 years and created hundreds of recipes. She is now living in Northern California.

By John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. All I can say is the Framers of the Second Amendment really screwed the pooch with this nebulous sentence: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The intent seems clear enough to me in the context of the time that citizens needed weapons in order to serve in local militias as well as for hunting and protection. But I can’t imagine that James Madison, who proposed the amendment, would now condone giving anyone, especially a troubled individual like the Uvalde gunman, an AR-15 and 375 rounds of ammo like he purchased shortly after his 18th birthday. The results of that permissiveness have been agonizingly obvious for the last 30 years or even more, especially since the 1994-2004 ban on assault weapons was lifted. We now live in a country where an estimated 390 million firearms are in private hands. That’s more than one per person. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were approximately 50,000 verified shooting incidents in America each year from 2014 through 2020. During that time, nearly 250,000 people died by gunfire (more than 138,000 of them by their own hand) and nearly 210,000 were wounded. That grim toll has only grown during the last two years. In 2020, there were a record 611 mass shootings (a minimum of four victims). This year there have been 246 as of June 6. Recent ones in Buffalo, Laguna Woods, Uvalde and Tulsa triggered yet another round of calls for “common sense” measures such as universal background checks; “red flag” seizures of firearms from people deemed a danger to themselves or others; safe storage requirements; and age limits on the purchase of so-called assault rifles and high capacity ammunition magazines. “Infringed” is defined as “act so as to limit or undermine (something); encroach (intrude) on,” but why must we lock ourselves into violent madness simply because of the wording of an amendment that can easily be clarified and modified? And do legal requirements that bolster responsibility automatically deny everyone a right? I just don’t see how rational regulations are as bad as what we are dealing with every day in this country. I always hear right-wing politicians and commentators complaining that law-abiding citizens pay the price when gun laws are enacted or made stricter. What price? Inconvenience at having to prove you can meet certain standards? Being unable to own a type of weapon that even law enforcement officers feel civilians should not have? People can’t content themselves with another kind of firearm? Let’s talk inconvenience and paying a price. I drive a school bus, a job that requires me to take three written exams with fees, provide three references and fingerprints, undergo several months of training, pass a road test and take another one every two years, attend a week of safety classes and annual refreshers, pass an annual physical, and submit to random drug testing, all in the name of safety and responsibility. Bad bus drivers are still on the road. I read and hear about them all the time. But rather than offer up thoughts and prayers after one of them has a deadly accident, the federal government in 2020 created an online data base that all school districts and private bus companies can access when assessing the driving records of applicants. Surely it has prevented more than few miscreants from taking the wheel of a vehicle loaded with children. Yeah, I know. The Constitution does not include the right to drive a bus. But buses are not designed to kill. Guns are. So wouldn’t it be simple common sense to require equally rigorous standards for firearm possession if we’re actually interested in safety? Some states, such as New York, are trying, but in Texas you can buy and carry a gun without a permit or training. The current Supreme Court, dominated by conservatives, will likely make such things easier in other states for decades to come. With our entrenched political conflicts and fanatical gun culture, it is impossible to turn America’s tide of misuse unless responsible owners can be can be encouraged to join forces with lawmakers to craft effective national laws and regulations or improve existing ones. Those owners also need to be free from the fear of being blamed or ostracized for either perpetuating our epidemic of gun violence or defying what has long been a commandment: Thou shalt not compromise. I suspect that one reason why background checks and red flag laws are so strongly opposed on the right is because some people feel they have something in their personal history that would disqualify them from being able to purchase a firearm. That would also cut into sales and profits for gun manufacturers. As I pointed out in my recent Insider piece about Tucker Carlson, there are huge bundles of money to be made in destructive activities like the sale of firearms. Throw in lucrative stuff like violent entertainment, social media that allows people to withdraw from the real world into echo chambers of hostility and misinformation, and the enthusiastic marketing of high-powered weaponry, and you have a recipe for national tragedy without end. “The idea that an 18-year-old could walk into a store and buy weapons of war designed and marketed to kill is, I think, just wrong,” President Biden said after the Uvalde shootings. “It just violates common sense.” At present we have only an ineffective hodgepodge of federal and state laws to regulate our popular tools of death and suffering. A strict law in one state can be undermined by lax regulations in another. The boilerplate right-wing response to any call for gun control legislation is, “Laws don’t stop criminals.” That’s obvious. Laws only ensure punishment after the deed, but they help lessen incidents of crime. Robbery, assault, rape and murder are all illegal and still occur. It’s safe to say there would be many more of them if they were not. We still have auto accidents and fatalities even with laws against speeding and drunk driving, but not as many deaths as we did before those laws went into effect. Like gun laws, speed limits, seat belts and DUI measures were resisted when they were first proposed. Seat belts are credited with saving more than a million lives since being federally mandated in the 1960s. Traffic fatalities declined by more than 50 percent in the first 10 years after the national 55 mile-per-hour limit was adopted in 1974. Annual drunk driving deaths have dropped from 18,000 to around 11,000 since a crackdown began in 1985. Universal standards are well worth trying with guns, but they’re blocked by the same political party that fights long and hard to ensure the survival of every unborn fertilized egg while also fighting long and hard against measures that would help to protect human beings once they are in this world. In our political climate, doing the right thing with gun control will surely be seen as caving to the Democrats and liberals, something many in the GOP would probably rather die than be seen doing in the eyes of their peers and base. That tribal mentality is a huge, insidious obstacle. So we get reasoning like this (from a reader on the Poughkeepsie Journal’s website): “You don't have a right to safety. Buy a gun and defend yourself if need be.” The asinine “If it isn’t 100 percent effective, it’s not worth doing” attitude has also been used with masks during the pandemic even though they have been proven to limit the number of cases when used correctly. Ending all violence committed with guns is impossible, but sensible efforts in regulation and other areas such as mental health, security and promotion of civility will go a long way to reducing it. A New York Times piece on June 2 points out that six of the nine deadliest mass shootings since 2018 were committed by assailants 21 years old or younger. Some act out of a sense of isolation, helplessness and resentment. Those emotions are also being stoked in the wider population by social media, partisan commentators and extremist politicians. So how does it make sense that a country awash in anger, fear, alienation, bitter political polarization, and paranoia should have unfettered or easy access to guns? The self-defense argument presents a paradox and only goes so far. If more guns mean more safety, why does America have such a stratospheric level of gun injuries and deaths? Of 50,928 reported shooting incidents from 2014-18, only 23 percent (11,981) involved self-defense. Enforcement of laws is never perfect, but it can always be improved. Yet as the gun carnage continues, elected Republicans, especially the ones in the Senate, refuse to do even the most obvious thing. Look at this way: Let’s say America is a house full of people. Adults 21 and over are legally allowed to drink alcohol and smoke pot. Some can handle these mind-altering substances without problems. Others become irresponsible and even violent. Some of the under-aged kids are getting ahold of the comestibles and frequently trashing the house and hurting each other while stoned. Now wouldn’t the most practical move be for the responsible adults to strictly limit access to the booze and pot? Maybe by locking them in a cabinet where only the legally-aged and demonstrably responsible have access? Their right to drink and toke would still be preserved. Sure, some of the others will find a way to do it, but why make it easy? As legendary humorist and social commentator Will Rogers once said, “Just because it's common sense, doesn't mean it's common practice.” John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com (https://celestialchuckle.com) with the meter running.

By Naomi Serviss / New York City Theater fans rejoice: The Tonys! The 75th Tony Awards show, to be held at Radio City Music Hall on June 12, is officially Something to celebrate! Yay! A break from real life! (And don’t feel guilty about indulging in joy.) After the early spring deluge of 19 opening (or reopening) productions, frazzled Tony voters were herded through the theater district to soak up all the shows before voting. It wasn’t a typical season: it started late and was waylaid by the virus, among other disasters. As you well know. No need to recap everything in toto, but in December, Covid forced about half of all shows to shutter at times. Covid felled even the mighty Hugh Jackman and his co-star Sutton Foster! Things were a mess. Don’t even mention Stephen Sondheim missing Company’s opening or someone might tear up. Regardless of this historically tumultuous season, 34 plays and musicals managed to open. Or to reopen. Twenty-nine nabbed at least one nomination. A Strange Loop scored the most, eleven, and The Music Man garnered six. One popular show’s an old chestnut with the performer’s performer, Hugh Jackman. Who doesn’t remember seeing The Music Man on celluloid or, lucky ones (me!) on stage during its Philadelphia tryout? Robert Preston starred. A Strange Loop might be less familiar and more squirmy. This Pulitzer-Prize winner for Drama bills itself as: a “big, Black and queer-ass American musical.” You will not have seen the likes of this theater-universe-shattering extravaganza of song, dance and X-rated acts. This is not a nuclear family-friendly show. The tale hinges on an usher (named Usher) at an unspecified Disney production. Usher is working on a musical about...an usher creating a musical while working at a Disney production. Whose name is Usher. Existential, irreverent, hilarious, provocative, evocative and wildly creative, A Strange Loop will thoroughly shock and entertain. Bring your willing suspension of disbelief and enjoy the ride. This musical resonates like Rent & Hamilton in a ground-quaking seismic shudder. It’s fresh, daring and taboo-busting. And representative of talented Black writers whose work is increasingly being seen and heard on Broadway. It’s about time. Despite on-again, off-again vaccine and mask regulations, ticket buyers are undeterred. Should you buy your tickets in person, be forewarned about midtown. Tourists are back in droves. Be on the lookout for jaywalking, sidewalk clogging, abruptly halting ticket holders scoping out Shubert Alley. Suddenly stopping in a moving throng of experienced city walkers is a good way to get “accidently” elbowed. Or worse. It could happen. Playwright Martin McDonagh, who started his prolific career in the Royal National Theater with The Pillowman in 2003, penned another masterful black comedy with Hangmen. Nominated for five Tony awards, the morbidly fascinating tale revolves around Harry Wade, the "second-best" executioner. Wade's career derails once executions are abolished. His last victim proclaimed his innocence until the bitter end. Once a cub reporter and a disturbing stranger appear at the pub, all hell breaks loose. Events that follow will leave you gasping...for more! Five new plays opened this season: Pass Over Chicken & Biscuits Clyde’s Thoughts of a Colored Man & Skeleton Crew There were also revivals of: Lackawanna Blues for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf Trouble in Mind Slave Play (reprise run) The three new musicals (A Strange Loop, MJ and Paradise Square) that earned the most Tony nominations had Black book writers, as well. High drama was not just relegated onstage. One evening performance of Come From Away, nine of the 12 performers were standbys. Moulin Rouge (last year’s best musical) had to recently cancel four performances. That’s life in the pandemic. MY PREDICTIONS: Best Musical: A Strange Loop Best Play: The Lehman Trilogy Best Revival: Company Best Actor: Myles Frost, MJ Best Actress in a Musical: Sharon D Clarke, Caroline, or Change Best Featured Actor in a Play: Jess Tyler Ferguson, Take Me Out For a list of nominees and a chance to play along, check out TheaterMania's Interactive Tony Awards 2022 Ballot Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 86 By Laurence Lerman / New York City As he readied himself for the carefully choreographed Memorial Day Weekend opening of his new film in North America, Tom Cruise was gearing up for what many film industry experts considered “Mission: Impossible.” His challenge? Convincing moviegoers to leave the comfort and pandemic-safety of their streaming platforms and head to the theaters to pay to watch a sequel to a 36-year-old movie. Though it was a sequel to a very popular older movie, times had clearly changed. Now the question was whether or not an audience would elevate a big-budget Hollywood film to blockbuster status without the requisite comic book superheroes, CGI-infused visual effects technology, intergalactic encounters or genetically enhanced dinosaurs audiences have been regularly bombarded with for more than two decades. The answer was a resounding YESSSSSS! Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to 1988’s Top Gun, launched into orbit on Memorial Day weekend—much higher than any fighter jet has ever flown. The film grossed $156 million domestically over the course of its four-day holiday opening, making it Cruise’s biggest opening at the box office in his 40-year career. It also marked his first-ever $100 million opening. That broke the record for biggest opening for the Memorial Day holiday weekend previously held by Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which rang up $153 million in 2007. Maverick is the third biggest debut of the year, behind—not surprisingly—a pair of superhero movies, Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Warner Bros.’ The Batman. Call me a box-office watcher, but I’m loving seeing all the excitement Maverick is generating in audiences, theater owners, movie pundits and–I’m assuming–the always-grinning Mr. Cruise himself. Like it or loathe it, “Hollywood excitement” largely translates into box office receipts. Top Gun: Maverick picks up the story of Cruise’s Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a U.S. Navy test pilot who has avoided a promotion over the three-plus decades that have elapsed since Top Gun so that he can continue flying. On the brink of being grounded for recklessness, Maverick is instead ordered to a naval base on San Diego Bay’s Coronado peninsula to train an elite group of young pilots for a bombing mission of a target that is deemed a threat to the United States. In other words, the new film is an update of Cruise’s character that puts him back in the cockpit and teaching a “Top Gun” training program similar to the one he graduated from back in the 1986 film of the same name. Clearly, the alchemy is just right for the out-of-the-gate success of Top Gun: Maverick. It’s all come together with a formula that mixes a sense of nostalgia, outstanding reviews (as of this writing, it has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes), high-profile buzz on the film’s fighter jet engagements being executed by a highly trained cast (led by licensed pilot Cruise) without any significant CGI, and outrageously strong word of mouth. The result is a behemoth that’s sure to carry it to the No. 1 spot for at least a couple of weeks—or until the next summer blockbuster rears its head. (That will probably be Jurassic Park Dominion, which opens on June 10.) Top Gun: Maverick was originally scheduled to be released in July 2019 but was rescheduled for the spring of the following year in order to shoot and reshoot several complex action scenes. It was then hit hard with two more years of delays due to–what else?– the Covid outbreak. It was star and co-producer Cruise who insisted that he would never allow Top Gun: Maverick to debut on a streaming platform, which was a much-practiced studio trend only a year ago. “I make movies for the big screen,” Cruise has said more than once over the past two years as the film’s theatrical release date was endlessly rescheduled. Clearly, the man in the cockpit knew what he was talking about. The month-long lead-up to Maverick’s smashing rollout on Memorial Day weekend to 4,736 screens in North America (a theatrical booking record, according in American media measurement and analytics company Comscore) was its own miniseries of gala media events. On May 4, Paramount unveiled Top Gun: Maverick on the USS Midway, the iconic Navy aircraft carrier docked in San Diego, where much of the film was shot. Cruise “dropped” into the premiere by piloting and landing a helicopter on the carrier, stepping out and sauntering over to the foot of the red carpet to kick off the film’s world premiere, and joking that “an Uber entrance was just too simple.” Following a four-hour red carpet, Cruise and co-stars Jon Hamm, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller and others made their way to San Diego’s Civic Center Theater for another red carpet and the debut screening. Two weeks later, it was off to the Cannes Film Festival, where the film had its Cannes premiere on Wednesday, May 18. The show kicked off with Cruise’s stroll down the red carpet with his castmates, director and producer and the thunderous appearance of eight soaring fighter jets flying overhead and leaving streaks of red, white and blue smoke behind them (the colors of both the American and French flags). Taking the stage at Cannes’ Palais des Festivals et des Congrès to introduce the film, Cruise received a five-minute standing ovation, followed by his being presented with a “surprise” honorary Palme d’Or Award by the festival’s president, Pierre Lescure. Cruise was visibly moved by the accolade of receiving what is considered to be the the most prestigious award of the iconic annual fest. (The honorary Palme d’Or Award has only been given to 15 people since it was introduced in 1955.) “Thank you for being here. We’re here for you. I make these movies for all of you. I’m of you in every meeting, in every moment,” Cruise said to the standing crowd. “Especially in Cannes, you love movies.” Cruise and company have been on hand in various international cities for red carpet and other opening festivities. And that all happened before the triumphant opening of the film in North America and around the world, where it’s also racking up some outstanding numbers. Examining the worldwide dominance and phenomenon of Maverick, one must consider the remarkable career of Tom Cruise. To remain such an indomitable force in the film industry for the past four decades requires more than just a magnetic screen presence and sizzling smile—careful planning, deliberate timing and smart decisions are all part of the game play, and Cruise seems to have that all down. Next week, I’ll take a look at the indefatigable Cruise and his indomitable career, from his launch as underwear dancing suburbanite Joel Goodson in 1982’s Risky Business to his reign as the intellectual property overlord of the Mission: Impossible franchise, the seventh installment which is due to hit screens in July, 2023 Until then, happy flying! Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about. Most recently, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online review site DiscDish.com.

Fred Plotkin, a pleasure activist and passionate Italy and culinary expert, speaks each Friday with leading people in the arts FRED PLOTKIN is one of America’s foremost experts on opera and has distinguished himself in many fields as a writer, speaker, consultant and as a compelling teacher. He is an expert on everything Italian, the person other so-called Italy experts turn to for definitive information.  Fred discovered the concept of "The Renaissance Man" as a small child and has devoted himself to pursuing that ideal as the central role of his life. In a “Public Lives” profile in The New York Times on August 30, 2002, Plotkin was described as "one of those New York word-of-mouth legends, known by the cognoscenti for his renaissance mastery of two seemingly separate disciplines: music and the food of Italy." In the same publication, on May 11, 2006, it was written that "Fred is a New Yorker, but has the soul of an Italian."

By Andy Borowitz June 3, 2022 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a move that could tip the scales in the war against Russia, U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have reached an agreement to ship Americans’ four hundred million firearms to Ukraine. “The Second Amendment calls for a well-regulated militia necessary to secure a free state,” Biden said. “I can’t think of a better description of what’s going on in Ukraine right now.” Zelensky said that he welcomed the transfer of armaments to Ukraine, but expressed surprise that the cache included more than twenty million assault rifles. “We, of course, could really use weapons, because we were invaded by Russia,” he said. “But why on earth did so many Americans have them? Were they afraid of being invaded by Canada?”

May 26, 2022 Jeffrey D. Sachs | Il Sole 24 Ore Fifty years ago, Italian business leaders in the Club of Rome gave a jolt to the world in their path-breaking report Limits to Growth. That thought leadership continues today as Italian business leaders launch Regeneration 2030, a powerful call for more holistic, ethical, and sustainable business practices to help the world achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. The 50-year journey from Limits of Growth to Regeneration 2030 shows how far we have come in understanding the critical challenges facing humanity, but also how far we still have to go to meet those challenges. The half-century since Limits to Growth also defines my own intellectual journey, since I began university studies at Harvard University exactly 50 years ago as well. One of the first books that I was assigned in my introductory economics course was Limits to Growth. The book made a deep and lasting impression on me. Here for the first time was a mathematical simulation of the world economy and nature viewed holistically, and using new systems dynamics modeling then underway at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Limits to Growth warned that compound economic growth was on a path to overshoot the Earth’s finite resources, leading to a potential catastrophe in the 21st century. My professor huffily dismissed the book and its dire warning. The book, the professor told us, had three marks against it. First, it was written by engineers rather than economists. Second, it did understand the wonders of a self-correcting market system. Third, it was written at MIT, not at Harvard! Even at the time, I was not so sure about this easy dismissal of the book’s crucial warning. Fifty years later, and after countless international meetings, conferences, treaties, thousands of weighty research studies, and most importantly, after another half-century of our actual experience on the planet, we can say the following. First, the growing world economy is indeed overshooting the Earth’s finite resources. Scientists now speak of the global economy exceeding the Earth’s “planetary boundaries.” Second, the violation of these planetary boundaries threatens the Earth’s physical systems and therefore humanity itself. Specifically, humanity is warming the climate; destroying the habitat of millions of other species; and polluting the air, freshwater systems, soils, and oceans. Third, the market economy by itself will not stop this destruction. Many of the most dangerous actions – such as emitting climate-changing greenhouse gases, destroying native forests, and adding chemical nutrients to the rivers and estuaries – do not come with market signals attached. Earth is currently treated as a free dumping ground for many horrendously destructive practices. Twenty years after Limits to Growth, in 1992, the world’s governments assembled at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit to adopt several environmental treaties, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Twenty years later, in 2012, the same governments re-assembled in Rio to discuss the fact that the environmental treaties were not working properly. Earth, they acknowledged, was in growing danger. At that 2012 summit they committed to establish Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide humanity to safety. In 2015, all 193 UN member states adopted the SDGs and a few weeks later signed the Paris Climate Agreement to implement the 1992 climate treaty. In short, we have gone a half-century from the first warnings to today. We have adopted many treaties and many global goals, but in practice, have still not changed course. The Earth continues to warm, indeed at an accelerating rate. The Earth’s average temperature is now 1.2°C warmer than in the pre-industrial period (dated as 1880-1920), and is higher than at any time during the past 10,000 years of civilization. Warming has accelerated to more than 0.3°C per decade, meaning that in the next decade we will very possibly overshoot the 1.5°C warming limit that the world agreed to in Paris. A key insight for our future is that we now understand the difference between mere “economic growth” and real economic progress. Economic growth focuses on raising traditional measures of national income, and is merely doing more of what we are already doing: more pollution, more greenhouse gas emissions, more destruction of the forests. True economic progress aims to raise the wellbeing of humanity, by ending poverty, achieving a fairer and more just economy, ensuring the quality education for all children, preventing new disease outbreaks, and increasing living standards through sustainable technologies and business practices. True economic progress aims to transform our societies and technologies to raise human wellbeing. Regeneration 2030 is a powerful business initiative led by Italian business leaders committed to real transformation. Regeneration aims to learn from nature itself, by creating a more circular economy that eliminates wastes and pollution by recycling, reusing, and regenerating natural resources. Of course, an economy can’t be entirely circular – it needs energy from the outside (otherwise violating the laws of thermodynamics). But rather than the energy coming from digging up and burning fossil fuels, the energy of the future should come from the sun (including solar power, wind, hydroelectric, and sustainable bioenergy) and from other safe technologies. Even safe man-made fusion energy may be within technical and economical reach in a few decades. On my part, I am trying as well to help regenerate economics, to become a new and more holistic academic discipline of sustainable development. Just as business needs to be more holistic and aligned with the SDGs, economics as an intellectual discipline needs to recognize that the market economy must be embedded within an ethical framework, and that politics must aim for the common good. Scientific disciplines must work together, joining forces across the natural sciences, policy sciences, human sciences, and the arts. Pope Francis has spurred the call for such a new and holistic economics by encouraging young people to adopt a new “Economy of Francesco,” inspired by the love of nature and humanity of St. Francis of Assisi. Sustainable Development, Regenerative Economy, and the Economy of Francesco are, at the core, a new way of harnessing our know-how, 21stcentury technologies, and ethics, to promote human wellbeing. The first principle is the common good – and that means that we must start with peace and cooperation. Ending the war in Ukraine at the negotiating table without further delay, and finding global common purpose between the West and East, is a good place for us to begin anew. Published in Il Sole 24 Ore for the Trento Festival of Economics, June 4, 2022 Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University, is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as adviser to three UN Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism, and, most recently, The Ages of Globalization.