By Andy Borowitz May 3, 2022 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senator Susan Collins, who had been assured by Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 that he considered Roe v. Wade “settled law,” said today that she was “shocked” that the Supreme Court Justice “would ever lie to a woman.” “When I met with Justice Kavanaugh before his confirmation hearings, he looked me in the eye and said that he considered Roe v. Wade the law of the land,” she said. “Nothing in his confirmation hearings suggested that he would ever be less than trustworthy with a woman.” “As I watched his Senate testimony, I felt even more confident that he had told me the truth,” she added. “His utter respect for a woman’s right to make decisions for herself came shining through.” In the aftermath of the leaked Supreme Court draft ruling and reports that Kavanaugh voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, however, Collins is reassessing her ability to tell whether someone is lying to her. “My conduct in this matter has left me troubled and concerned,” she said.

By John Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. On April 18, MSNBC commentator Malcolm Nance announced he had left his media jobs to help Ukraine in its desperate defense against Russia’s brutal invasion. “I’m DONE talking,” Nance tweeted, confirming he had joined the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, a force of 20,000 volunteer fighters from 52 countries. His tweet included a photo of him wearing a helmet, camouflage and a flak jacket while holding an assault rifle, though he is mainly serving as an advisor in the field. “Despite the fact that Russian television put my name, face and everything I say on television (except the part about mass murdering civilians) and called me a “soldier of fortune”, this ain’t about money,” Nance told The Guardian in a recent interview. “We get paid $600 a month. But I believe in the defense of democracy. Even though my right-wing critics don’t believe me or the lies they tell, I actually believe in the things that I espouse on television.” Has another notable news media personality ever done anything like this? Usually we get an endless parade of retired generals and armchair warriors offering their opinions on armed conflicts, especially those involving the U.S. I can’t think of one pundit in recent memory who has actually taken up arms and gotten involved, especially at Nance’s age (61). Nance is a former Senior Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy. He served from 1981 to 2001 and specialized in cryptology. In recent years he’s made his name as an expert in counterterrorism, intelligence and foreign policy. He frequently appears on MSNBC, but I know of him as a guest panelist on the daily talk show “Roundtable” on NPR’s WAMC-FM out of Albany, N..Y. His insights are fascinating and often terrifying. The author of 10 books on such subjects as Russian hacking operations, ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and the Trump GOP’s betrayal of America, Nance has been monitoring extreme right-wing groups that took part in the January 6 insurrection. He says those extremists pose a dire threat to our democracy and anyone who opposes them. Hence the title of his latest book, They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency. In 2014, Nance founded the Hudson, N.Y.-based think tank Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideology. He’s also trained law enforcement and intelligence personnel and special forces soldiers in survival techniques. Most recently, he’d been in Ukraine closely observing the buildup to the Russian invasion and its immediate effects. “The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought, I’m done talking, It’s time to take action,” Nance told MSNBC’s Joy Reid during the interview on April 18. “This is an existential war, and Russia has brought it to these people and they are mass-murdering civilians. And there are people here like me who are here to do something about it.” Reports about Nance and his activities have since been few and sketchy. His colleagues on WAMC’s Roundtable have expressed their concern for his safety. But this isn’t the first time Nance has been in a war zone. He’s seen combat in the Middle East, Africa and Southwest Asia. “I had no idea” Nance had gone to fight, writer Michael Harriot stated in the introduction to his interview of his “personal and professional acquaintance” for The Guardian. “But it sounds exactly like something Nance would do. It’s the most Malcolm thing ever.” Outspoken about human rights, ethics and racial/cultural integration in intelligence agencies, Nance testified before Congress in 2007 that the C.I.A.’s use of torture on terrorism suspects does not yield reliable intelligence information. He spoke from experience, having witnessed and even supervised waterboarding. His testimony helped spark a public outcry. On April 19, Nance engaged in a Twitter skirmish with retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser who pled guilty to charges of lying to the F.B.I. about conversations he’d had with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. during the 2016 presidential campaign. (Flynn was later pardoned by Trump.) During an interview with notorious Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell (best known as the CEO of My Pillow), Flynn predictably questioned Nance’s cause and credibility by echoing Russian talking points about the invasion. "Is he fighting for a fascist dictator, or is he fighting for communism? Whose side is he on here?" Flynn asked. "Is he supposed to be a journalist that's reporting the news, or is he out there trying to make the news? What kind of ploy is that?" Nance’s response was a fiery and profane tweet that referenced a dinner Flynn attended with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2015: "PSA: Tell Mike Flynn that I fight for DEMOCRACY. Flynn LITERALLY ate Putin's bread SEATED AT HIS RIGHT HAND. He LOVED Moscow's cash & spent years nestled deeply in Vlad's cold, white KGB a**. Now he supports Russia's murder of a free people!? F**k you, Mike Flynn. F**k. You!" Malcolm Nance is a rare individual in a media world dominated by pampered, ignorant loudmouths who exhibit what musician Roger Waters caustically condemned in his song “The Bravery of Being Out of Range.” Nance is successful and well-off with a comfortable life in New York’s Hudson Valley. He didn’t have to do what he is now doing at this stage of his career though people as old as their 80s have reportedly joined Ukraine’s armed forces. “The war that’s being waged here is being waged against everybody,” Nance told MSNBC’s Joy Reid in their interview. “The International Legion is a multinational force, there are men and women, there are thousands here who are here to protect this country. So I decided to come here to assist them with the skills I have myself.” And as he told The Guardian, “Plus, I’m a widower, which means I understand grief, which is a powerful motivator in this instance. It was the thought of all of the grief this country was taking in that invasion. And I just thought, this is, this was completely uncalled for, this is insanity.” Condemning insanity is easy, actually doing something to stop it is hard, but Malcolm Nance is about a lot more than words. 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 Victoria Rolfe / Red Hook, N.Y. Spring is in the air, and our thoughts are turning outward, most notably to our own yards. I have mentioned a few times in this space that we can change the trajectory of the world one backyard at a time, and now comes a great opportunity for you to do just that. The garden centers are starting to fill up with spring inventory, and we are itching to get out there and beautify our yards but I would like you to take a few moments before you rush there and stop to give it a little thought first. We tend to view our landscape as an extension of our home, and thus want to decorate it. But when it comes to the great outdoors, our own property is much more than just a pretty place to look out upon or sit and relax in. In the grand scheme of things, it is NATURE. Here’s a staggering statistic: 86.6% of land east of the Mississippi is privately owned. So, when it comes to preserving nature, we cannot look to “them” to do it. It is up to US! As this country became developed and neighborhoods and suburbs sprung up throughout the land, the urge to tame nature into pretty little scenes took hold, and the landscaping industry was born. The typical suburban home was nestled into some bushes and a few trees were scattered in the yard, with maybe a flower bed or two. And, as with many industries, competitive pricing and mass production took over. And because we are “decorating” our yards, beauty became paramount. Landscapers went far and wide to find beautiful plant specimens that they imported from all over the world. And horticulturists began playing with species to come up with more and more colors and bigger and prettier blooms. The problem with all this is no one was taking into consideration the impact this was having on nature itself. So now, fast forward to the 21st century and what do you see? Millions of suburban houses throughout the land with almost identical landscaping. And big-box-store garden departments selling the same 20 or 30 species of backyard plants from sea to shining sea. Oh, we see variety too, but mostly it is from all those hybrid cultivars that the breeders have been churning out to produce ever bigger double flowers, or grow to a certain size, or that don’t make a mess in the landscape, or are resistant to certain bugs or diseases. Now you might be wondering what is wrong with that. So what? At least they’re plants, right? Well, unfortunately for nature, wrong! Nature has evolved a very delicate balance through the millennia and relies on plants that have been around for the ages. Most wildlife depends on specific plants to survive, and those imported exotics might as well be plastic as far as they are concerned. And you might not care about the bugs who can’t get a bite to eat around here, but if you care about yourself (and the rest of humankind), you should. We are a part of that delicate balance too, and the more insects and caterpillars we lose for good, the closer we get to losing our own food supply that depends on this equilibrium to grow. Noted University of Deleware entomologist Doug Tallamy has shown that one native live oak tree supports over 500 species of caterpillars, while an imported gingko tree hosts only five. And native plants not only host the nature that we are so reliant on, they help save the planet in so many other ways. A plant adapted to this area will be perfectly suited to the water supply that naturally occurs here, saving precious water by requiring many fewer (if any) supplemental waterings. They will also be perfectly suited to the soil content in our area and thus require fewer artificial fertilizer supplements, which can leach into our ground water and be another source of pollution). And the pests that bother them will also have natural predators living here, thus requiring few if any pesticides to keep them looking good. All plants (especially those big trees in our yard) will capture the carbon that we are continually spewing into the air that leads to climate change, but a native tree will do so much more for us. So, it’s time that we stop thinking only of beauty and our own enjoyment of the plants that we choose for our yards but give thought to how we can contribute to our natural world and do our part for the planet as well. Since, at least in this neck of the woods, most of the planet IS our backyards, it is truly up to us. I ask you to think about this as you head out to the garden centers this spring. Look around for purchases that might help our tiny native friends, such as bird houses, bee boxes, bird baths and butterfly puddlers. And when it comes to your plant purchases, look at the plant labels and talk to the nursery men and women, and whenever you can, choose native! I thank you for your consideration, and your Mother Earth will thank you too! A long, long time ago, after the birth of her third child, Victoria made the life-changing decision to leave the work world behind and devote herself to being a full-time mom and homemaker. Along with her new title of Domestic Engineer, she took on the role of the Chief Home Economist for the family. At first, it was scary to try to live on less than half their income, but Victoria found that she not only rose to the challenge but thrived in the enjoyment of learning to live their best life with limited resources. She embraced this new frugal lifestyle of the at-home-mom and went on to add a fourth child to the mix. And their family was complete. Along the way she acquired a great deal of wisdom in how to not only avoid debt, but pay off mortgages early, buy cars for cash, travel on a shoe-string budget, and send kids to college with no student loans, all while also saving a tidy nest egg for retirement. She currently educates others in these skills through her business Bright Future. Now living the life of a modern homesteader in the Hudson Valley, New York, Victoria has added gardening to her list of skill sets as she grows many of her own vegetables to supplement her family’s primarily vegan diet. And she has come to realize that this waste-not, want-not, carbon-friendly, sustainable life she is living is not only benefiting her own family but also our Mother Earth, and that each of us has the obligation to live a responsibly sustainable life not only for ourselves, but for the greater good of our community, and our planet. We can all do this one household and backyard at a time. We are the world! And it all begins right at home. Victoria can be reached at brightfuture2budget4@gmail.com

By Naomi Serviss / New York City Broadway is sticking to its guns mask-wise. Sort of. For now. At least until May 31st, when the current mandate expires. Clear yet? To muddle matters more, proof of vaccination will no longer be needed after May 1st. Remember all the trouble it took to get those cards? Seems unfair they’ll soon be a faint memory. Yet, 2022 has been nothing if not unpredictable. Is this the pandemic’s tail end? Or is the virus endemic and we have herd immunity? Maybe it’s herd stupidity. These unsettling updates may affect your live theater-going decisions. Diehards (like me) are boosted and good to go. Since attending Broadway shows is my stock-in-trade, I’ve been acclimating to the fates’ whims (as long as I have final say). Hence, unvaccinated folk might slouch past (or squeeze next to) you into their expensive seats, with only a mask required through Memorial Day! Who’s to say what summer may bring? So it goes. Existential crisis paralysis for some. High anxiety for others. After a spirited inner dialogue, I concluded that mask-donning is common-sensical. For me. Others will sort out their own druthers. As long as they spray away from me, I’ll keep attending live theater. Since my second booster, I’ve been feeling pretty, pretty good. Not even a reaction other than the expected next-day sore left arm. It wasn’t my pitching arm, so all’s well that ends well. Common sense dictates that immunocompromised folk stay far from the madding midtown theater crowd. Regardless, I shall be masked when sitting cheek by jowl with two armrest hogs on both sides, a hair’s breadth away. Recently opened in no particular order: Mr. Saturday Night, Billy Crystal performs Borscht Belt schtick, replete with soft-shoeing and harmonizing. Crystal’s a born performer playing a born, but not reformed, entertainer. His character excels at geriatric crowd schmoozing. Not as successful as a parent. Crystal fans will regret missing this one. Funny Girl critics were kind to the miscast lead, who didn’t captivate or impress, and whose voice was found lacking, especially with Barbra’s shadow looming large. Reviewers were sour on the production and disappointed such a powerful story was reduced to sentimentalism. How I Learned to Drive, the harrowing Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Paula Vogel. Starring Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse, about incest. A tough subject, but portrayed masterfully by the featured actors and ensemble. The Minutes, another gripping Tracy Letts tale, with the author playing a key role in this savagely twisted play. Austin Pendleton steals the show. Hangmen, Martin McDonagh’s latest brainstorm, is brilliant. Better to go in fresh, without bias. This is a tough nugget you’ll savor long after the curtain. Expect droves and loads (as in bus) of out-of-towners enthusiastically selfie-snapping and clogging sidewalks. The tourists can’t quit Manhattan. Nor should they. They should be encouraged. Visitor numbers are soaring since relaxed Covid regulations replaced strict mandates throughout New York State. That’s terrific news to the city’s PR bureau, which has been sweating out the past two woebegone years. Visitors jam up Times Square looking for memorable moments, not to merely enjoy in the here and now, but to stage for posterity. Instead, they’re faced with the Naked Cowboy (he is fit) and a dubious off-the-rack Elmo scaring the kids. There’s a sense of pre-Covid days, especially when trying to navigate around the clueless and ignorant of New York flow. Sidewalk etiquette means brisk walkers should pass on the left without visible signs of annoyance or eye rolls. And do not stop midstep to text. That’s how people go flying willy-nilly and land in Bellevue Hospital. And not in a crowd-pleasing, Peter Pan way. Savvy theater fans are familiar with TKTS, where day-of, half-price theater tickets are sold. The pickings can be sweetly tempting. Some big scale musicals (you may be surprised to see posted) and should-be-seen straight plays are frequently available. It’s a given that earning Broadway bragging rights is the real reason to come here. If you have theater tickets pre-Memorial Day, you will note uniformed ushers hoisting admonishing placards that read: MASK ON AT ALL TIMES There will be silver-haired gents committing offense by exposing their noses at seatmate’s expense. Still, nothing compares to ants-in-your-pants anticipation in a hushed, darkened theater, hundreds of strangers also waiting to be transported. Hopefully, I won’t be the only one masked. 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

The Insider: Hi Dr. Leshanski. Ready to start our text interview? Dr. Leshanski: Sure! The Insider: How many years have you been a veterinarian? Dr. Leshanski: 25 The Insider: How old were you when you started practicing? Dr. Leshanski: 29 The Insider: Did you always know that was what you wanted to do professionally? Dr. Leshanski: No, not really. Took me a while to figure it out. But that is a bit of a longer story, and one which revolves though a few countries The Insider: Want to give me the quick version of that? Dr. Leshanski: Hard to really make this a quick version but more or less… After college I went and lived in Switzerland for a year with one of my college roommates. We happened to be there in ‘89-90 as the Iron Curtain was falling. So every weekend, we’d end up traveling to countries whose dictatorships had just ended And while we often didn’t have any language in common, I started playing a lot of chess with people despite language barriers. And it was then I realized just how much I loved the mental aspect of doing things like that…solving puzzles, figuring out what was going to happen next, predicting and preventing And I realized I had not felt that sort of challenging thing since some more or less basic Mendelian genetics back in high school. So I decided to go back into science. Went back to school and started taking pre-med classes. Figured if I found one science I loved, I’d veer off into that, as pre-med gives a decent overview of some sciences. And if worst came to worst, I could go to med school. I was partly though it when an advisor asked if I had ever thought about vet school. And that was pretty much the moment I figured it out. Though to be fair, I thought of it more as doorway to epidemiology or something else. But once I started doing actual medicine, I loved it. And basically stayed here. The Insider: Wow! What a wonderful epiphany! Of course, you know that your story would make a terrific memoir. I’ll buy a copy of that! Dr. Leshanski: People keep telling me that. Especially with all the things I’ve dabbled in on the side, and the travel too The Insider: When you started practicing, did you have a traditional vet practice? Dr. Leshanski: Well, I didn’t have one, but I worked at a few. I did a big internship at a place in North Carolina where I saw 30-40 patients a day, then came back to New York to work with a veterinary acupuncturist and did a bunch of per diem work. So I worked for others and while I was doing it, I planned to open a house-call practice. The Insider: What was the appeal of a house-call practice? Dr. Leshanski: That came while I was still in the early stages of vet school. My big orange cat, Hobbes, was at the end of his life (he died young), and when the time came I had to take him into a hospital. I felt in the end he had spent the last two hours of his life in abject terror. All of it, the crate, getting taken out of the house, being transported by taxi, and being brought into a hospital with barking dogs, strange smells, etc… He glued himself to me that whole time.. so afraid. And I strongly felt that no animal should ever have to go through that at the end of life. Or really at any time in life. So At Home Veterinary was born, although everyone thought I was crazy to strike out on my own and not just take a full-time gig working for someone else. The Insider: Because we’re a pandemic publication, I’m really curious how your practice has changed during the pandemic. Dr. Leshanski: Hmm…in some ways it really has, and in some ways it hasn’t. Obviously, we take precautions pretty seriously-- we’ve been N95ed though the whole thing, and early on, we used a lot of drop cloths, chucks and things to prevent our equipment from touching the environment in a home. And obviously a lot of disinfecting. But we adapted just like human hospitals did. And we tried to cater it to our clients’ needs. We saw a lot of pets without owners present. Even did exams, and more in hallways for people who were infected. And helped rescue and arrange temporary shelter for pets who had sick owners who could not care for them at the time. That said, we lost a lot of clients as they and their families fled the city And we gained too, from people who were uncomfortable with just dropping their pet off at a hospital door. The Insider: Tell me more about helping people who had Covid deal with taking care of their pets. Dr. Leshanski: Well, it varied widely. And there is too much to tell really. It ran the gamut from hallway exams, or exams with people in other rooms, with us in hazmat suits, to a woman who was so sick, so badly that all she couldn’t even be in the house for a euthanasia. The Insider: Wow! So sad. You wore Hazmat suits to avoid catching Covid from pet owners? Dr. Leshanski: When they had Covid and we were going into the house we did, gloves too, and we wiped the animals down with surgical scrub to examine them when we needed to take gloves off. The good news was that almost everyone recovered The Insider: Thank goodness! Did any of the animals get sick from being around sick pet owners? Dr. Leshanski: That is a very hard thing to say. I currently have one cat I’m treating who I think may gotten Covid from an owner. But she has not allowed me to test the cat, so that is just speculation at this point. But by in large I think most animals escaped unscathed. I’ve heard plenty of anecdotal stories however. The Insider: What have you heard? Dr. Leshanski: I tend not to give a lot of credence to stories. I think far too many times they are just not true. Blaming Covid instead of a more likely cause for death gives people comfort, and in some ways allows them to absolve themselves for not getting care that might have made a difference. So I don’t believe or repeat those stories. Though I never can say 100% that some are not true. Especially since some big cats did die of Covid. The Insider: If a pet owner gets Covid, what do they need to do to protect their pets? Or would you tell them not to worry? Dr. Leshanski: I would suggest that they isolate from their pets as best as they can, as it costs nothing, so why take the risk? But even with owners in studio apartments, I don’t see a reason to believe the risks are very high. Especially since almost all of the known/proven cat cases have pulled though without real issues. And I’ve yet to see a credible case in a dog The Insider: Can animals with Covid spread it to human beings? Dr. Leshanski: Unlikely, but certainly not impossible. Most pets who have come down with this have had very close contact with an infected owner. Which is not to say a pet could not spread it between owners, but based on what we know right now, I think it most likely if the pets were infected by someone in the household, and sleeping, or being kissed by someone else in that same household. There are too many things we don’t know yet to say for sure. The Insider: We did a cover story about zoos and Covid, and about how many zoo animals are being vaccinated now. Why is it more common in species like lions or gorillas than in house pets? Dr. Leshanski: When you are talking about hominids, they are certainly more like us. As to big cats… we don’t really know. It could be as simple as we are not testing for this as much in house cats. Or that they weather the symptoms a lot better than big cats do. The Insider: Before we close, I’d love to ask you a few of the questions I bet you get asked all of the time. What is the most unusual animal you’ve ever treated? Dr. Leshanski: Again, a bit of an odd one. In the city it was probably a tarantula whom the owner accidentally stepped on in the dark one night. But I’ve been lucky enough to work with big cats, elephants, bison, and quite a few others in my career. The Insider: You’ve worked with racehorses, too, haven’t you? Dr. Leshanski: Yep. A long time ago. The Insider: And is getting bitten part of being a vet? Dr. Leshanski: Inevitably it is. No matter how good you are, you are going to bleed sometimes. More likely from scratches, but the occasional bite too. The Insider: New York is the only state, I believe, that has outlawed declawing cats. Any thoughts on that debate? Dr. Leshanski: I don’t believe we are the only state. I think there are or two others and that Maryland is now debating it. I think most of the time there is no reason to declaw a cat. I think for the animal’s well-being, it is better not to. That said, I think there is room for certain exceptions. The Insider: And finally, I would be remiss in not asking you whether you have pets yourself. Dr. Leshanski: Of course! I don’t currently have a dog (I don’t really have the time for one and I’d feel terribly guilty if I couldn’t take care of them right) but I have two cats, Tiger Lily and Duke, and a tank full of fish at home. The Insider: Better keep the cats away from the tank! Thanks so much for a wonderful interview! Dr. Leshanski: My pleasure. The cats oddly have zero interest in the fish tank! Dr. Jonathan Leshanski, a NYC native, founded At Home Veterinary in 1997. He was awarded his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) from Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine. He has worked with horses at Aquaduct and Belmont Racetracks, exotic and zoo animals at Oklahoma State University and in southeast Asia, and did internships in CT and NC in small animal and alternative medicine. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Leshanski has gathered a loyal following of thousands of pet parents whom he serves with the utmost care and compassion. Dr. Leshanski is trained in acupuncture from the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society (IVAS) and the American Association of Veterinary Acupuncturists (AAVA), as well as trained in Herbal Traditional Chinese Medicine in New Mexico with Dr. Mona Boudreaux and Gary Allen, OMD. He is a member of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), and is the former President of the American Association of House Call and Mobile Veterinarians (AAHV). He was featured in NY Magazine’s Best Vets issue as part of the “Doggy Dream Team”, and has been in numerous other journals, magazines and television segments discussing the healthcare of pets. As a first responder on 9/11, Dr. Leshanski worked with the rescue and recovery dogs. He volunteered for 52 straight days with the veterinary unit at ground zero. In addition to his strong love of animals, he is an avid cast iron collector, enjoys travel, exploring different foods, scuba diving and spending time with his family. Dr. Leshanski is the proud parent of his 14 year old daughter Lily, and two felines, Tiger Lily and Duke.

April 22, 2022 Dear Editor, I am the river flowing I am the desert dry I am the four winds blowing I am the sunset sky I am the forest breathing I am the ocean wide I am the storm clouds gathering I am the mountain high I am the Earth –“I Am the Earth,” Glyn Lehmann A sunny 70° day and no clouds in the sky. It is Friday, the 22nd of April. Not just Friday, the 22nd, but Earth Day. To celebrate the beautiful weather and our environment, my nanny Stephanie, my sisters Willa and Olive, and I walked to Central Park, inhaling the gorgeous day. (Earth Day fell during our school spring break!) Since we don’t get to do this very often, this was a treat. We spent five-sixths of the day in Central Park, reading, eating, playing, jump-roping, relaxing, building fairy houses. We also brought trash bags and gloves, collecting litter around the park. Mostly, we found trash like bottle caps or plastic wrappers or dried up gum, but along the way we also collected trash from people, too. (Doing extra good deeds doesn’t hurt.) We chose to eat lunch under a shady tree. We had brought our lunch in reusable bags and ate with recyclable cutlery. Instead of plastic containers, we packed the main course in thermoses. And instead of plastic water bottles, we brought steel reusable ones. (As they say, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The three R’s. That’s what the R in Earth stands for.) After lunch, we went back to collecting trash. With Olive as trash bag holder and Willa and me as trash-picker-uppers, we made a pretty good team, and when the job was done, I could tell that the park was a lot cleaner. I guess the Sun thought so too, because it shined extra bright all afternoon (pleasant, but not pleasant). After all that trash cleaning, Stephanie brought our picnic into the sun and we sunbathed. After a while, we got antsy, so we found dirt patches and collected sticks and set up log cabins for fairies. After a while, that kind of got boring, too, but Stephanie to the rescue! She’d brought jump ropes and books. When that got boring, we danced. When we got exhausted, we tied four of the five jump ropes together and played Child on the Loose! where Olive held one end of the four jump ropes and I held the other (like a child leash) and she’d pull me around, occasionally having me let go and then she’d run away. Willa stayed out of the fun, though, and made us take apart the jump ropes, screaming “YOU’LL BREAK THEM! YOU’LL BREAK THEM!” the whole time. To top off all the fun, before we left for the park, we baked soy- and gluten-free cookies, and I decorated bags for them. Then, we gave them out to homeless people in our neighborhood and to other people we’re grateful for (for example, the doormen in our building). So overall, we had a very Earthy Earth Day. I hope all of you Insiders had one too! Sienna Beck / New York City Sienna Beck is a 9-year-old author who loves writing short stories. She goes to a camp called Writopia, and once entered a play contest and was selected to have her play professionally performed by trained actors. Sienna has two sisters, Willa and Olive, and they all go to P.S. 87 in New York City. Sienna likes animals, including pets and mostly dogs. She also wants to be THE PRESIDENT when she grows up.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the pandemic, Part 79 By Laurence Lerman / New York City With the arrival of the assassin thriller Memory in theaters this Friday (April 29), leading man Liam Neeson steps out in his latest “senior action movie,” a subgenre of action films that Neeson himself practically created some 15 years ago in a film that became a surprise, career-changing hit. Memory, directed by veteran action helmer Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, The Mask of Zorro), is based on the 1985 Belgian novel De zaak Alzheimer by Jef Geeraerts, which was previously adapted into the 2003 Belgian thriller The Alzheimer Case. The film finds Neeson portraying Alex, a seasoned assassin caught in one of those quagmires that always seems to haunt cinematic hitmen. He refuses to complete a job that violates his personal code, setting off a race for him to hunt down and kill the criminals who hired him before they and the FBI find him first. It sounds like a solid if not overly original story for a hitman flick. The rub here comes in the form of Alex’s faltering memory and other increasing symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, which forces the addled assassin to question his every move as the line before between right and wrong begins to blur. That Neeson’s latest guy-with-a-gun flick has him battling both a cabal of bad or worse guys and the horrors of encroaching Alzheimer’s is undeniably right-on. Neeson is 69-year-old actor who, along with looking his age, can definitely recognize a solid genre when he knows he’s good for it. This must have been instantly clear to him, along with international audiences and studio executives, when, in 2008 at the age of 56, he starred in Taken, the French-produced English language revenge film where he portrayed a retired CIA agent who must gear up and track down his estranged teenage daughter after she is kidnapped. Based on a script co-written by Hollywood-styled genre filmmaker Luc Besson, (The Professional, La Femme Nikita) and directed by Pierre Morel, Taken was an international smash, grossing $225 million worldwide and catapulting Neeson’s respectable but static film career in a fresh and exciting direction. A pair of inevitable sequels followed—the cleverly titled Taken 2 (2012) and Taken 3 (2014)—along with a number of other revenge-themed action thrillers in which an older guy hits the armory and sets out to right what’s wrong and take down the criminals (or, at least, those who are worse criminals than him). Of Neeson’s dozen-plus senior action films, there are some good ones (2014’s A Walk Among the Tombstones and Non-Stop, 2019’s Cold Pursuit), some bad ones (2011’s Unknown, 2018’s The Commuter, 2021’s The Ice Road), and some that came and went so quickly they’ve already been forgotten. Blacklight, where Neeson plays a government operative who finds himself on the wrong side of an F.B.I. manhunt, was just released wide to theaters this past February and you probably know as much about it as I do. (Well, I do know that it’s currently available to stream on Amazon and other video on-demand services.) Of course, Neeson isn’t the first older actor to thrive in the senior action arena, just one of the few that arrived at the party after he had aged into it. Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Gibson and Willis are all still banging out action-thrillers, but they’ve been doing those kind of movies since they were at the height of careers. All are in their late 60s or older at this point, and it’s difficult not to compare their recent action entries to the work they did when they were considerably younger men. Where Neeson’s movies differ is that they represent a distinct second act in a respectable career that’s coming up on 50 years and includes lauded performances in such significant films as The Mission (1986), Husbands and Wives (1992), Ethan Frome (1993) and the venerated Schindler’s List (1993). Neeson also appeared in his share of thrillers and action films prior to his steady engagement with the form over the past 15 years. He portrayed a post-Civil War bounty hunter in the 2006 Western Seraphim Falls a couple of years prior to Taken and the murderous leader of the League of Shadows in 2005’s Batman Begins right before that. And don’t forget his cinematic weapon-wielding in a number of notable efforts made when he was much younger, including A Prayer for the Dying (1987), Michael Collins (1996) and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), where he ran his lightsaber through a phalanx of robot warriors as Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Sure, Neeson isn’t the first older guy to appear in an action film one year and then a drama or two a year later. Look at 67-year-old Denzel Washington, who, in just four years, blew away the bad guys in The Equalizer (2014) and The Magnificent Seven (2016), then starred as a hard-working family man in the film adaptation of Lanford Wilson’s stage drama Fences (2016). A year later, Denzel was an idealistic L.A. defense attorney in the legal drama Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017), before returning for more gunplay in 2018’s The Equalizer 2. (I don’t have to include his Oscar-nominated turn in last year’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, do I?) Even as Neeson continues to appear in senior action vehicles that are adjusted and tailored to meet his requirements and skills, he has let it be known that he’s approaching a time when he will move on from the very lucrative and popular subgenre he helped to pioneer. “I’m 68-and-a-half, 69 this year,” he said of his action films in an interview in early 2021 when he was promoting that season’s entry, The Marksman. “There’s a couple of more I’m going to do this year—hopefully, Covid allowing us—and there’s a couple in the pipeline and then I think that will probably be it. Well, unless I’m on a Zimmer frame or something.” Unfamiliar with a “Zimmer frame,” I looked it up and learned that it’s actually an aluminum walker. A joke, yeah, but it’s not hard to imagine Neeson turning his Zimmer frame into the most lethal of weapons if the situation demands it. We’ll check back in a couple of years. 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 Carly Mitchell / New York City (The author, a public-school teacher, is using a pseudonym for professional reasons) Every time I walk past the library at the middle school where I work, my heart sinks a little. The room is large and sunny, there are plenty of books and places to sit and read, but everything is in disarray (so long, Dewey Decimal system). There are no students curiously browsing the shelves, and there is no librarian to help students discover the wonders of literature. By now you probably know that I am an English teacher at a Title 1 school in Brooklyn, N.Y., meaning a high percentage of our students are from low-income families. I was fortunate enough to grow up with a grandfather who was a librarian, to live in a house with a basement full of books (at one point I even ran a pretend library down there), and to attend well-funded schools in Westchester County that always had beautiful libraries. As a result, I have a profound appreciation of books, and the sacred spaces where they can be enjoyed by the community. At my former school (a small charter high school in northern Brooklyn), there was no library. We occupied only two floors of the building we were in, and there was simply no space. So when I first started working at my current school, I was excited to lay eyes on the school library. Unfortunately, I soon learned that because of budget cuts, our library is just a room full of books. To be clear, there are small libraries in each English classroom and we receive some wonderful literature from our school district–but the fact that we have a designated library that is no longer funded is criminal. Before becoming a teacher in the New York City schools, I didn’t realize there would be so many deficiencies in our education system. After all, we are one of the wealthiest states in the entire U.S.! Alas, there are a number of glaring issues that are not necessarily public knowledge. For example, in order to get certain supplies that are not supported by our budget, many teachers have been forced to get creative. A number of my colleagues have started using the program DonorsChoose.org, a public charity founded by a former Bronx, N.Y. teacher that helps public school teachers raise money for their classrooms. Teachers I work with have created DonorsChoose pages to purchase items like laptops, headphones, and furniture for their classrooms. DonorsChoose is wonderful and our projects are always funded, but it strikes me as ridiculous that teachers have to go so far in order to secure basic resources. I often wonder if things would be different if our school population were wealthier. Would we need programs like DonorsChoose? Would we have a functioning library? I suppose I’ll never know. In the meantime, my fellow seventh grade English teachers and I plan on taking the students in our classes on a field trip to a Brooklyn public library. We want our students to share in the glorious experience that is a room full of books, old and new, and a professional guide to help them navigate the magical place. To me, there is nothing better. 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 Bonnie Fishman / San Francisco Bay Area Simon & Garfunkel had it right—it’s all about the herbs! And this week, it’s particularly about one of my favorite ones, rosemary. But a little of my own herbal history first: I don’t know what I would do without my fresh herb garden. I’ve always been amazed at how many cooks don’t use fresh herbs. If you don’t or can’t grow your own, they are widely available in grocery stores. When we lived in Michigan, I was able to maintain a garden almost year-round. The sage managed to stay supple through November, when I incorporated the fuzzy green leaves into my Thanksgiving stuffing. I don’t know how spice producers manage to manufacture such an awful taste as that dried rubbed sage in the grocery aisle during the holidays. How can this even be the same herb? My thyme came back year after year, no matter what I did to it. Sometimes I dug under fallen leaves and snipped a few sprigs before the hard freeze. Parsley, on the other hand, froze during the winter months. It began to return when the days grew warmer in the spring. Now that I live in California, I can enjoy fresh herbs all year round. Truth be told, I do not plant the herbs. My husband, Bob, is the gardener. I just pick them and cook. It’s a pretty good arrangement! I don’t like to garden and he doesn’t cook. Win, win. This season, Bob has given up on putting parsley in the ground, instead opting for pots. Why, you ask? Normally parsley is a great growing herb. It is hardy and continues to produce even after many cuttings for cooking use. But we have a parsley thief. First, I thought it was the long-eared jack rabbits that inhabit our environs. But recently, we discovered otherwise. We have an infestation of gophers! They’ve built an extension tunnel system under our property. My sister Nancy witnessed a gopher grabbing a weed and pulling it underground in an instant. I’m guessing they did that with both of my parsley plants, which disappeared roots and all. Now I’m ready to tell you about the glories of rosemary. When we lived in colder weather in Michigan, I brought my rosemary plant inside during the winter. and it provided me with beautifully scented marinades, stews, and soups. Since we moved west, what I have found amazing is the abundance of rosemary everywhere here in California and other Mediterranean-like climates. Rosemary was used as far back as the beginning of the Greek and Roman civilizations. It grows successfully in the sandy, rocky soil found in the south of France, Italy and Greece. Locally, I see it used to grow hedges for front yards, to beautify planters in public spaces, and to accent bushes around buildings. You never have to buy rosemary in the grocery store because you pass it on everyday walks. The bushes have lovely small purple flowers in the spring. As you pass the rosemary, the aroma is intoxicating. It screams Italian or French cooking. Because rosemary has such a bracing flavor-it is NOT a delicate taste-it stands up well to heartier meats such as pork, lamb, beef, or chicken thighs. I use it when I make a thick bean or potato soup as a “finishing” herb, adding it at the end. One thing to note when cooking with rosemary or other fresh herbs: it is best to add them at the end of the cooking process. If you add them in the beginning, the taste and texture gets washed out. I usually add dried herbs at first if I’m braising or stewing and then introduce the fresh herb at the end. The freshness will really brighten your dish with color and flavor. Today’s recipe uses fresh rosemary in both the marinade and the dipping sauce. I’m using chicken thighs but you can use pork in its place. Offer these skewers as an appetizer or an entrée. For an appetizer, I recommend grilling them on an 8” skewer and removing the meat from the skewer. Arrange the chunks in a serving bowl or on a platter with decorative picks and dipping sauce on the side. If serving it as an entrée, thread five pieces of chicken on each skewer. Grill and then serve one or two skewers to each guest. Rice is a nice accompaniment. A time-saving tip: when buying chicken thighs in bulk, trim the fat from the meat. Cut the chicken into 1” cubes, and freeze in 1-lb. Ziploc bags. When you have guests, defrost the chicken cubes and marinate them. The labor of this recipe is really in the chicken prep. One last suggestion: if you want to make these skewers more decorative, thread different colored bell peppers, cut into 1” pieces, on the skewers alternately with the chicken. You may find a 10” skewer more appropriate here. Tell us at The Insider how you feel about herbs—or about Simon & Garfunkel! Have a great meal! Grilled Rosemary Chicken Skewers Yield: 10-12 skewers (10-12 appetizers or 5-6 entrées) 3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil 1 1/2 Tbsp. fresh minced rosemary 1 Tbsp. brown sugar 1 Tbsp. coarse salt 1 1/2 tsp. fresh ground black pepper 1 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes (less if you prefer less spicy) 2- 2 1/2 lb. skinless, boneless chicken thighs, fat trimmed Combine oil, rosemary, brown sugar, salt, black pepper, and red pepper in a small bowl. Put in a large Ziploc bag. Cut the chicken into 1” pieces. Add to the bag. Drizzle in the oil. Seal the bag, tossing the contents together. Allow to marinate in the refrigerator for 1-4 hours, not overnight because chicken is too tender to be in the marinade that long. Thread 1 piece of chicken on each 6” skewer, keeping the meat toward the end. Continue with all of the chicken. Allow to sit at room temperature for 1 hour. Grill skewers over a moderately high fire, turning often, about 10-12 minutes total. Serve hot or at room temperature. Orange Marmalade Dipping Sauce 1 c. orange marmalade 1/4 c. rice wine vinegar 1 tsp. fresh minced rosemary Warm all ingredients in a small saucepan.Serve warm or at room temperature. 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 Naomi Serviss / New York City --What if Moses had said “Let my people grow”? The grass is always greener….especially since April 21 in neighboring New Jersey. That’s when the Garden State became one of the first (on the east coast) to legalize the sale of recreational marijuana . A great huzzah echoed statewide, pungent with sweet puffery. I got a contact high. Dispensaries offered enticements, promotions and heavy in-house discounts. Free T-shirts, tote bags and lighters were gleefully distributed to happy-camper customers. It was also a day after 4/20, the unofficial holiday of blazing marijuana insiders. According to stoner lore, this ritual blossomed with five high-school teens from Marin County, Calif., in the 1970s. They continued to congregate and light up beneath the bleachers at 4:20, having fun with a purpose to search for a cannabis plant. Legend has it the herb was left behind in a forest by a U.S. Coast Guard member. He was unable to maintain the plant. You can’t make this stuff up. Ironically, New Jersey had approved the hemp plant’s legalization in 2020. It was already available to card-carrying medical marijuana residents, the customers of New Jersey’s 13 medicinal dispensaries. This heralded occasion was a long time coming. The new law is the product of a ten-year struggle by New Jersey cannabis proponents to catch up to states that have ended criminalization. Nearly 20 states and D.C. have already legalized recreational pot. Thirty-seven states permit medicinal marijuana use, in all its forms. Too bad New Yorkers with a pot penchant must wait until state legislators hammer out a tax deal. Those in the know figure that could take a year. Albany’s gears never did run smooth. New York legalized recreational weed in 2021, and still hasn’t hammered out a licensed market. Too many stirring the pot, perhaps? New York dispensaries, meanwhile, are desperate to keep their customers vaping, toking and munching edibles. They’re mindful of New Jersey’s legal weed temptations a bridge or tunnel away. Now that the legal risks of toking have gone up in smoke, some are curious about marijuana’s history. YIVO, a New York-based research institute in Manhattan, claims the pungent plant is Old Testament-rooted. Juicy tidbits are promised in an upcoming exhibit: AM YISREAL HIGH: THE STORY OF JEWS AND CANNABIS Thursday May 5, 7 p.m. Mentioned in the Bible and discussed in traditional texts, cannabis has always been an accepted part of Jewish life. According to YIVO, Jews have been dealing and using cannabis for religious, medicinal and recreational purposes for millennia. Highlights of the upcoming exhibit will include ordinary stuff repurposed for cannabis consumption including a menorah-shaped bong, and a yarmulke festooned with cannabis leaves. Expected partakers of the free, live (and live-streamed at 7 EST) event, will likely be good-humored. And maybe a little hungry. 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

By Andy Borowitz April 26, 2022 AUSTIN (The Borowitz Report)—In his first official act since acquiring the social-media company, Elon Musk has deleted every Twitter account but his. Minutes after the acquisition was announced, the two hundred million people who had Twitter accounts found that they could no longer tweet, and that the Tesla C.E.O.’s tweets were the only ones that appeared on the site. In an official statement, Musk said that he deleted everyone else’s accounts to address “the No. 1 problem plaguing Twitter: the relentless flood of voices inferior to mine.” The billionaire said that he would consider letting people other than himself back on Twitter “on a case-by-case basis.” “If people can show that they have something to say that’s as smart as what I’ve got to say, they will get their accounts back,” he said. “So, not likely.” Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.