A Kremlin loyalist suddenly turned against Putin. A day later, he was in a psychiatric hospital.

"It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms- all of them- may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage." Rod Serling

A cold is dangerous for asthma sufferers because viruses trigger inflammation

A cold is dangerous for asthma sufferers because viruses trigger inflammation, excess mucus, and airway tightening, often turning minor infections into severe asthma attacks. These infections can lead to complications like bronchitis or pneumonia, with symptoms often lasting longer and requiring immediate, tailored management to avoid crisis.  

Why Colds and Asthma are Dangerous Together      

Viral Triggers: Viruses, such as those causing common colds or flu, are the most common cause of asthma flare-ups.    

Reduced Defenses: People with asthma often have a lower interferon response, meaning their airways are less able to fight off cold viruses, resulting in more severe inflammation.     

Airway Sensitivity: Cold viruses cause airway inflammation, muscle tightening (bronchospasm), and increased mucus production, which causes intense wheezing and shortness of breath.   Management and Prevention Tips      

Act Fast: Follow your Asthma Action Plan at the very first sign of a cold.    

Inhaler Use: Use your reliever (blue) inhaler as needed and follow your doctor's advice on increasing preventive medication.     

Monitor Symptoms: Use a peak flow meter to track changes in your breathing.     

Prevention: Wash hands frequently, avoid crowded areas during cold season, and get a flu vaccine.   When to Seek Urgent Care      

Your peak flow rates drop significantly.     

Inhaler usage becomes more frequent without long-lasting relief.     

You experience increasing shortness of breath, a severe cold/fever (over 101 F), or symptoms that do not improve within 7 days. 

It is a common phenomenon for estranged or neglectful family members to attempt to reconnect after years of distance, particularly as they age or face mortality, often causing confusion, guilt, or anger for the person they ignored. Feelings of indifference after many decades are valid, and one has the right to set firm boundaries, as reconciliation is not mandatory regardless of their newfound interest.

Here is a breakdown of how to handle this situation based on insights into long-term estrangement:

Understanding Their Motivation

• Control and Manipulation: Sudden "care" can be an attempt to regain control if they feel it slipping away, or a way to avoid facing the consequences of their past behavior.
• Fear and Guilt: As they age, they may experience fear, anxiety, or societal pressure to "fix" relationships before it is too late.
• Unresolved Issues: They may be seeking a "pass" to ignore past hurts without taking accountability, often hoping you will take them back on their own terms. 

Taking Actionable Steps

If you wish to maintain your distance or manage their engagement, consider these options:

• Set Firm Boundaries: Clearly communicate your limits. For example, "I am not interested in a close relationship. I will accept a phone call once a month, but I will not be visiting".
• Protect Your Mental Health: Do not let their new behavior make you doubt your memories or feel guilty. You do not owe anyone forgiveness, especially if they have not earned it.
• Delegate or Buffer: If you feel obligated to handle urgent matters (like caregiving), do so through a third party. Hire a Geriatric Care Manager or Aging Life Care Professional to act as a middleman, or utilize your local Area Agency on Aging.
• Limit Interaction Type: If you do communicate, keep it to low-stakes methods, such as email or text, rather than in-person meetings, to maintain control over the engagement.
• Seek Support: Work with a therapist to process your feelings of anger, indifference, or guilt. 

Reconcile Only If Ready

• Evaluate Their Intent: Ask yourself if they are truly acknowledging the past, or just trying to rewrite it.
• Your Choice: You are under no pressure to change your life to accommodate them now. Your well-being is the priority. 

If you feel pressured, you are fully within your rights to maintain "no contact" to protect your peace.

At this point, the difference between de-escalation and escalation is the difference between an energy shortage measured in months and an economic catastrophe that could be felt for many years. And those choices are no longer T***p’s alone to make. Rogé Karma

John Mulaney’s best line was that the Kennedy Center would soon be renamed the “Roy Cohn Pavilion of Big Strong Men Who Love Cats.”

having a FEMA dude who can teleport directly to Waffle Houses is a great piece of disaster preparedness. ‪

 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fema-official-gragg-phillips-teleported-waffle-house-1235534828/

Tom Nichols:T***p now appears lost, unable to comprehend how a blockbuster movie that he scripted out, one in which he cast himself as the Liberator of Iran, has turned into a poorly received miniseries that might yet be renewed for another dreary season.

 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/trump-iran-war/686470/

Write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting. It will come if it is there and if you will let it come. GERTRUDE STEIN

Mafia Don Running the USA into the GROUND

 https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/noems-ad-procurement-scandal-was-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg

Peanut Eating Parts of the World

 Peanuts Peanuts are heavily incorporated into meals, particularly in Southeast Asia, West Africa, and parts of South America. Key countries include China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Nigeria, and Peru, where they are used in stir-fries, sauces, salads, and stews to add flavor, texture, and fat.

  Key Regions and Usage:     

 Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam): Peanuts are crucial, often blended into peanut sauce for satay or crushed as a topping for noodle and rice dishes.    

 China: As the world's largest consumer, peanuts are used in stir-fries (like Kung Pao Chicken), used for cooking oil, or eaten roasted alongside dishes.     

West & Central Africa (e.g., Senegal, Mali): Peanut stew (maafe), which incorporates groundnuts as a primary ingredient in the sauce, is a staple dish.     

South America (e.g., Peru): Ground peanuts are used to make sauces for traditional dishes.    

 India: Peanuts are commonly added to curries, rice dishes, and used in chutney.     

United States: Commonly eaten as a snack, particularly in the South, where boiled peanuts are a traditional staple.   

Top Peanut Consuming Countries:      China     India     Nigeria     United States     Indonesia

What USAID did, and the effects of T***p's cuts on lifesaving aid January 27, 2026 By Oxfam America

 https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/making-foreign-aid-work/what-do-trumps-proposed-foreign-aid-cuts-mean/

Swimming is highly effective at reducing wheezing and improving breathing in people with asthma due to the warm, humid, and low-pollen environment

The sport encourages controlled breathing, strengthens lung capacity, and helps clear mucus through the horizontal body position. It is considered a top, low-impact exercise choice for asthma sufferers. 

Key Reasons Swimming Helps Reduce Wheezing:

• Warm, Humid Environment: Unlike cold, dry air that can trigger asthma (cold-induced bronchoconstriction), the air around a pool is warm and moist, which is much kinder to airways.
• Controlled Breathing Patterns: Swimming forces swimmers to regulate their breathing, often using "trickle breathing" (exhaling steadily underwater). This improves breathing control and prevents the rapid, shallow breaths that can lead to wheezing.
• Increased Lung Capacity: Regular swimming strengthens the respiratory muscles, leading to higher endurance and better lung function over time.
• Low-Impact Cardio: It builds cardiovascular strength without causing the severe wheezing sometimes triggered by high-impact, dry-land sports.

Wheezing my Way into Spring!

 I can't believe how many medications I am taking to BREATHE this week. I hate it. None of my siblings have allergies. I am the ugly duckling swan who had all the surgeries and ailments blabla. People love to say "this is why you're an artist," and I want to slug them.

Laying on the table, so to speak The Column: 03.19.26 Garrison Keillor Mar 20, 2026

 https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/p/laying-on-the-table-so-to-speak

this guy’s lying about this, what else is this guy lying about?

 https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/markwaynes-world-the-cinematic-and-fantastical-life-of-trumps-dhs-pick

EXCLUSIVE: T***p Admin Wrongfully Deported More Than 100 Asylum Seekers by David Kurtz 03.19.26 | 5:26 pm

 https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/exclusive-trump-admin-wrongfully-deported-more-than-100-asylum-seekers

Henry David Thoreau: Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Henry David Thoreau: Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

Henry David Thoreau: The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.

Henry David Thoreau: I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau: If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau: If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Henry David Thoreau: None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

Henry David Thoreau: The voice of nature is always encouraging.

Henry David Thoreau: The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.

Henry David Thoreau: A man's wealth is measured by what he doesn't need.

Henry David Thoreau: What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Henry David Thoreau: The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau: To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.

Henry David Thoreau: Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.

Henry David Thoreau: The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Henry David Thoreau: Life isn't about finding yourself; it's about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.

Henry David Thoreau: Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!

Henry David Thoreau: It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

Henry David Thoreau: Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.

Heartbreak, hope, and a plea to save Temporary Protected Status for Haitians

After Emmanuel Damas’s death, families are left asking what comes next — and whether they’re safe.

Ruthzee Louijeune is a lawyer and at-large city councilor in Boston.

On March 2, Emmanuel Damas died in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona. He had been in a coma, stemming from an untreated toothache he’d been complaining about for weeks.

He was taken into ICE custody last September after Boston Police arrested him on a domestic incident. Damas had been healthy and living legally in Boston as a political asylum applicant from Haiti. His 76-year-old mother and younger twin brothers flew to Arizona to fight for Damas to be unshackled on his hospital bed for his final breaths. The Saturday after his mother returned from Arizona, I visited her at her home. No words can describe a grieving mother’s agony.

Emmanuel Damas.Uncredited/Associated Press

Over the past year, my City Hall office has been flooded with calls from residents across our city. Their questions are simple, but the answers are not: What will happen to us now? Will I lose my job? Should I be afraid to go to work?

Last Wednesday, a man came to my office with his daughter. ICE had picked up his wife, a Brazilian national, and was holding her in Colorado. Without her income, the family could not afford both child care and rent, so they faced eviction. My staff and I listened, made phone calls and sent emails. We are doing all we can to help.

Recently, I have been convening some heavyweight philanthropic institutions and the mayor’s office to commit more than $3 million in a public-private partnership to support Boston’s immigrant communities.

I’ve been so focused on the work because that is what this moment demands. But I’ve also been hoping it could ease heartbreak. It has not.

Damas’s story is not isolated. It is part of a larger moment of fear and uncertainty for immigrant families across the country.

Damas was in the United States under a different status, but 350,000 Haitians are living and working in the United States now under Temporary Protected Status.

Many of them have been living here under this status since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. They have US citizen children who have lived here for their entire lifetimes, teenagers in our schools. They are our bus drivers, home health aides, construction workers, and small-business owners. They pay taxes, collectively in the billions over time nationally. They volunteer in our churches and neighborhoods.

President Trump does not disguise his hatred of Haitians, which is steeped in anti-Blackness. In both of his terms, judges found that racial animus motivated his attempts to end TPS for Haitians and blocked his efforts. On March 6, an appeals court upheld the latest order. The Trump administration filed an appeal to the Supreme Court last week. The court has decided to hear oral arguments on an expedited basis in April, with a decision to follow in late June or July. An unfavorable ruling would expose 350,000 Haitians to deportation proceedings.

Meanwhile, our own State Department warns people not to travel to Haiti due to gang activity and control.

Representative Ayanna Pressley has filed a petition to force a vote in the House of Representatives to redesignate Haitian TPS, despite opposition from the Republican leadership. We are close to the signatures needed but have more work to do. I wish for a better future for Haiti. I long for a day when I can travel there to pay my respects to my beloved grandmother who raised me and who died in 2022. But such a voyage would now be unsafe.

I long for a Haiti whose soccer team, joyously making its first appearance in the World Cup in 52 years in Boston in June, could have played even one of its qualifying games in Haiti instead of nearby Curaçao.

Our Haitian neighbors with TPS can’t return safely to Haiti, and neither can I. Nor, as Damas’s death shows us, can they live safely exposed to the ICE deportation machine.

Do not let the Trump administration gaslight you. It is trying to create unlawful immigrants by stripping them of their lawful TPS status. The data show that immigrants commit fewer crimes than US citizens.

We must hold ICE accountable. We cannot feed more human lives to an irredeemable system rooted in racism, authoritarianism, and xenophobia. We cannot allow TPS to fall.

No matter what happens in Washington, our values of becoming a more perfect union rooted in progress and compassion must remain at the heart of who we are.

Even in uncertainty. Even in heartbreak.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/20/opinion/tps-haitians-boston/

Henry David Thoreau: Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.

For just one day, give up all clocks.

I made Harvard students give up their clocks. The results were revelatory.

The power of taking a break from monitoring the time all day.

John Edward Huth, a professor of physics at Harvard, is the author of “A Sense of Space: A Local’s Guide to a Flat Earth, the Edge of the Cosmos, and Other Curious Places.”

The relentless pace of modern life has resulted in a crop of new wellness trends that call for finding peace by abandoning all manner of modern tech: cellphones, computers, the internet, social media, etc. While these behavior changes have clear long-term benefits, I’d like to offer up a more radical change, one whose positive effects are immediate and undeniable: For just one day, give up all clocks.

I teach at Harvard, home to some of the highest achieving students around. For them, time seems to get chopped into atomized bits. I see students nervously check their watches in the hallways in between classes and craft daily schedules down to the minute. At some level they have no choice. Many of them got here by doing exactly this: prioritizing their learning through rigorous time management.

Anne-Laure Sellier is a psychologist who studies how we experience time. Broadly speaking, she says that we can be on either “clock time” or “event time.” Clock time is perhaps obvious, as we use clocks to define our activities. This regiments the life of a person with a calendar that is broken up into time slots for specific, interchangeable activities. That’s where most Harvard attendees, and probably most students, find themselves.

Someone on event time, on the other hand, uses internal cues to decide when to do things, usually in order of preference or convenience. They finish a task when it’s complete or when they feel like stopping, regardless of what the clock says.

While most people use a combination of clock time and event time, those who predominantly rely on event time often feel more engaged and in control of their schedules. Event-timers also see the connections between their experiences more clearly, according to Sellier, while clock-timers see the world as more disjointed and chaotic.

Most important, people on event time are happier, because they can savor moments more deeply than those constantly feeling the pressure of the clock. So how does a person make the switch from clock time to event time?

In my General Education course, I force students to become event-timers by asking them to give up time completely for a day. The rules of the exercise are straightforward: Pick a day when punctuality isn’t critical, turn off the internet, and put away all clocks and devices that betray clock time. The period without clocks starts at bedtime the night before.

The results, documented in their journals, are always astonishing.

“I realized how much of student life is structured around strict timing and instant responses,” one student wrote. “Being offline made the campus feel more spacious and less frantic, even though nothing around me had actually changed.”

One student noted that Harvard’s pace is relentless. “Ultimately, this day felt quieter, slower,

and more continuous — an experience I rarely have in my normal academic rhythm,” the student wrote. The student reported doing tasks until they felt complete rather than until they ran out of time.

Many students quickly tuned into natural rhythms to orient themselves, such as the path of the sun in the sky, the motion of stars, and the changing length of shadows over the course of the day. One student found that her dog had the ability to sense time, whining dramatically whenever she changed their routine.

Another student pulled an all-nighter and used the rising of the constellation Taurus just after sunset and its setting just before sunrise to mark the passage of the night. Some paid attention to human foot traffic, knowing that a large exodus from a building meant that it was around 5 or 6 o’clock and people were off to dinner.

This slowing down created more space for concentration. A first-year student wrote: “Paradoxically, removing time pressure made me more productive.”

Some students found that the anxiety they usually experienced was the result of relying too much on clock time. One wrote, “I get so fixated on deadlines and hours passing towards big final projects/exams. That kind of stress can be motivating for me, but when it gets to be really big, it tends to paralyze me.”

Not all students experienced a sense of peace, however. The exercise threw their normal habits into sharp relief. For example, one student reported feeling “unanchored” throughout the day and noticed the frequency with which they usually checked their phone and the time.

For their final project, two students chose to be blindfolded, driven to an unknown location, and dropped off before navigating on foot back to campus. They chose to go off-clock and off-internet. “On long stretches of road, with no phones and no music,” one of them wrote later, “Drew and I had a long conversation of the sort we had not been able to have in a long time.”

Overall, the exercise seemed profound to many, and they vowed to repeat it. Maybe we all should. Even in small doses, actively taking a break from time can actually bring us more in tune with its passage.

The freedom that lies beyond time is probably best captured in Peter Beagle’s fantasy novel “The Last Unicorn,” in which a talking skull monologues: “Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, week-ends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls.”

In doing this exercise, my students found that they didn’t need to die to walk through the walls of time. They just had to be shown another way. 

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/20/opinion/giving-up-clocks-for-a-day/ 

An adult "stuck" at a young age is often experiencing arrested emotional development or involuntary regression, where trauma or deep emotional wounds freeze development at that age.

 An adult "stuck" at a young age is often experiencing arrested emotional development or involuntary regression, where trauma or deep emotional wounds freeze development at that age. This can cause childish behavior patterns to reappear during times of stress, trauma, or lack of autonomy, requiring therapy to address the root causes. 

 Key aspects of this phenomenon include:     

 Trauma Response: Unhealed trauma, particularly from childhood, can prevent emotional maturity, causing a "freeze" response where the individual reacts to life's challenges from the emotional capacity of that earlier age.     

Age Regression triggers: These incidents often occur when the individual feels unsafe, overwhelmed, insecure, or re-traumatized, leading to behaviors that resemble a younger child.     

Dependency and Responsibility: The individual may struggle with self-trust, autonomy, and accepting responsibility for their life, often relying heavily on others for support.  

Treatment: While it can feel hopeless, specialized therapy is necessary to help the individual process these "stuck" emotions and build tools to function as a mature adult.   If this behavior is sudden or accompanies memory loss, it could also be a symptom of a neurological condition, such as dementia.       

Raj Raghunathan: Harmony is the feeling that arises from not wanting to be somewhere else, doing something else.

Stop leaving and you will arrive. Stop searching and you will see. Stop running away and you will be found. Lao Tzu

Joseph Addison: Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, filling it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Patience means allowing things to unfold at their own speed rather than jumping in with your habitual response to either pain or pleasure. Pema Chödrön

Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm. Unknown

Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene. Epictetus

Astronomical spring arrives across Northern Hemisphere

The arrival of the vernal equinox marks the beginning of astronomical spring across the Northern Hemisphere, bringing increasing amounts of daylight and warmer temperatures.

In 2026, the equinox officially takes place on Friday at 10:46 a.m. EDT, when the sun is positioned directly above Earth’s equator.

At this moment, parts of the planet experience nearly equal amounts of daylight and darkness, with roughly 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness.

 

From this point forward, daylight will continue to significantly increase in the Northern Hemisphere through the summer solstice.

Astronomical spring differs from meteorological spring, which is the time period used by climatologists and forecasters for seasonal record keeping and analysis.

Meteorological spring began on March 1 and runs through May 31, while astronomical spring began on March 20 and continues through June 21.

Astronomical seasons are based on Earth’s position relative to the sun, while meteorological seasons follow a consistent three-month calendar.

The fixed nature of the meteorological calendar allows researchers to more easily compare temperature and climate data from previous years.

No matter whether the astronomical or meteorological calendar is used, the growing daylight is noticeable, with earlier sunrises and later sunsets becoming more pronounced, with each day gaining roughly two minutes of additional sunlight.

Despite the milestone, cold air intrusions remain possible, as spring is the second-coldest season of the year due to a lag between the increasing angle of the sun’s rays and warming temperatures.

Earth’s tilt has the greatest impact on the seasons, rather than the distance between the Earth and the sun.

The globe is actually closest to the sun in early January, a point known as perihelion, while the planet is farthest from the sun in early July, which is called aphelion.

During the perihelion stage, North America typically experiences its coldest temperatures of the year, while the opposite is true during summer, when the warmest conditions occur even as the planet is the farthest from the sun.

The gradual increase of sunlight will continue until the summer solstice in June, which is the longest day of the year.

The shortest day of the year across the Northern Hemisphere occurs on the winter solstice which annually takes place on Dec. 21 or 22.

Andrew Wulfeck

https://www.cfpublic.org/2026-03-20/astronomical-spring-arrives-across-northern-hemisphere

Following this Case

https://people.com/grandparents-rights-trial-focuses-on-widowed-dad-munchausen-syndrome-claim-exclusive-11913754

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” — Upton Sinclair

A bus tour and spoof in one: activists stage elaborate performance art highlighting ICE sites in Vermont

 Shannon McDermott of Burlington, Vt., played a mock tour guide for ICE Tours VT, a group staging a mock tour of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement-related sites. The project uses guided tours and scripted elements to explore themes of immigration enforcement and public perception.Oliver Parini for The Boston Globe https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/19/metro/ice-tours-vermont-surveillance/

BURLINGTON, Vt. — They didn’t come for the fall foliage, or the skiing — not even for the freshly boiled maple syrup.

Instead of the natural wonders of the Green Mountain State, the two-dozen people who gathered for a bus tour Tuesday in this city’s tourist hot spot had come to see an unwelcome transplant to Vermont — ICE, and not the frozen kind.

“Good morning and welcome to the first-ever tour of a brand-new tour company: ICE Tours VT,” one of the hosts said through a microphone. “My name is Barb, and I’ll be your tour guide today.”

Her name was not Barb, and this was not a tour company of any vintage. Rather, it was an elaborate work of performance art designed to bring attention to one of Vermont’s least-known specialties: hosting facilities for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other branches of the Department of Homeland Security.

Despite its liberal reputation, the state has become home in recent decades to a large number of DHS facilities, including surveillance centers that fuel its immigration enforcement actions throughout the country.

For the next few hours, “Barb” — real name Shannon McDermott, 58, of Burlington — would lead a group of activists posing as tourists from one government facility to the next. She and her fellow actors would read from cue cards, cataloguing the harms they believe the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement apparatus is causing the nation.

They’d pose for photos outside ICE offices, at one point donning giant inflatable eyeballs to pantomime the spying they said was taking place inside.

Participants set up for a performance art event organized by ICE Tours VT in downtown Burlington.Oliver Parini for The Boston Globe

This was an elaborate stunt. As the “tourists” prepared to board a pair of rented minibuses, they perused custom-made merchandise and professionally illustrated maps and brochures displayed on an info table in the middle of a pedestrian walkway. Everything, buses included, was emblazoned with the fake company’s fake logo: a masked man wearing an ICE hat next to an outline of Vermont. Each tourist adopted an assumed identity, with name tags and occasional bits of scripted dialogue.

Organizers had been building hype for the project for weeks, taking out an ad in a local newspaper that led readers to an ICE Tours VT website. A video crew was on hand to gather footage intended to go viral.

Behind it all was Blaine Paxton, 56, of Burlington. A supply chain management consultant, Paxton had recently helped convince officials in nearby Williston to issue a condemnation of ICE — even though the agency employs hundreds of people in town.

Activists in Vermont have been protesting the federal outposts for years, but Paxton said he was looking for a more creative way to raise awareness.

“The goal is for the public to take action against these facilities,” he said.

Quinn Rol of Burlington read trivia questions on a minibus for ICE Tours VT, a group staging a mock tour of Immigration and Customs Enforcement sites.Oliver Parini for The Boston Globe

As it has in Minnesota, Maine, and other states, ICE has drawn a higher level of scrutiny in Vermont since an enforcement action last week led to a violent protest in neighboring South Burlington, replete with pepper spray and flashbang grenades. The incident culminated with ICE storming a home, assisted by state and local police, and detaining three undocumented people hiding inside — none of whom were apparently the target of the original enforcement action.

Coincidentally, one of those detained, Christian Humberto Jerez-Andrade, was due for a hearing Tuesday morning in federal court one block away from where the mock tourists assembled. That led to an unexpected interaction near the ICE Tours VT info table when a protester en route to Jerez-Andrade’s hearing stopped to chide the tourists for their choice of tactics.

“Instead of, like, performatively trying to get a clip on TV, maybe you should consider going right now to go support and help them,” the activist told the crowd before walking away in a huff.

“Thank you so much,” said McDermott, who promptly returned to character as Barb and to her script for the ICE tour.

Shannon McDermott plays a mock tour guide named “Barb” for ICE Tours VT.Oliver Parini for The Boston Globe

The participants, bundled up for a blustery, late winter morning, crossed a street and crammed into the minibuses. As they zipped around the suburbs and business parks of Chittenden County, McDermott and fellow tour guide Sam — real name Quinn Rol, 36, of Burlington — shared the history of ICE’s outsize presence in Vermont.

Starting in the early 1990s, then-senator Patrick Leahy began steering funding to his home state for what was known at the time as the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. As he rose through the ranks of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the veteran Democrat brought more money, and more government facilities, to Vermont.

They now include ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center, which helps the agency share intelligence with local police around the country, and the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, which surveils social media and mines other data to track people ICE is seeking to deport. According to ICE Tours VT, Homeland Security operates at least eight sites in the area, making it one of the county’s largest employers.

Public knowledge of what goes on inside some of these outposts is limited. At one nondescript office park in South Burlington, the tour guides hopped out of the buses to describe what little they knew about what they referred to as “the mystery site.”

“This building is unmarked and there are no references to it on the DHS website,” McDermott said, feigning ignorance and surprise. “Employees here say they can’t tell anyone what the operation is that’s going on here. Security is so strict, lunch deliveries are not even allowed.”

McDermott gasped, leaning into her dopey persona as Barb the tour guide.

“How am I going to get my acai bowl?” she asked.

Participants gathered in front of an ICE National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center in Williston, Vt.Oliver Parini for The Boston Globe

A mock "tourist" held a brochure for ICE Tours VT.Oliver Parini for The Boston Globe

As Rol walked into the vestibule to investigate further, security officers disappeared and workers on the building’s first floor drew their blinds.

“It looks like there’s no one who wants to talk to us,” he reported upon reemerging.

Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to requests for comment about the bus tour or the the South Burlington site.

Between stops, the guides held an ICE trivia quiz, awarding a toy Blackhawk helicopter and a pair of handcuffs to the winners, and engaged in scripted banter. After telling her passengers to refrain from chewing gum or eating candy on the bus, McDermott began munching conspicuously on something she had slipped into her mouth.

“I’m sorry. Did you think those rules are for everyone?” she said. “Some rules are for you, and some rules are for me. ICE could teach you that rules aren’t for everyone.”

At the Law Enforcement Support Center in Williston, Paxton helped unfurl a banner featuring the phone number for a national ICE tip line. Calls are answered at the center and, last fall, it sought to hire 100 new customer service representatives.

McDermott encouraged the traveling crew to call the tip line and report “the worst of the worst” criminals. One suggested dropping a dime on White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

Down the road, at the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, also in Williston, McDermott noted the facility was expanding its use of artificial intelligence for surveillance. Organizers handed the passengers giant inflatable eyeballs and asked them to pose for a group photo in front of the center’s tinted windows.

“Everybody face the parking lot and just put those eyes right in front of your face, if you would,” she said. “Yeah, make it look like you’re looking around — looking around with your big eyeballs, spying on the world.”

“Everybody say, ‘Visine,’ ” someone suggested.

“Visine!” the crowd shouted in unison, eyeballs aloft.

Near the end of the tour, Maryann Bock, 73, of Burlington, said she hoped ICE Tours VT would “bring the facts to the forefront” to those unaware of the agency’s sprawling activities, in Vermont and beyond.

“The larger hope is that this kind of information gets spread throughout the country,” she said. “And events like this get repeated throughout the country to make people more aware of facts — not just ‘ICE out’ signs.”

As for whether ICE Tours VT would continue operating after its debut, Paxton said more than 100 people had already signed up on its website.

“We’ve been surprised by the level of potential demand for this kind of tour,” he said.

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Paul Heintz can be reached at paul.heintz@globe.com. Follow him on X @paulheintz.

Lobster rolls approach $50, but Bostonians appear happy to shell out

 I'd prefer a peanut butter sandwich anyway!

Rev. Benjamin Cremer: One of the most successful deceptions of our time was getting many Americans to fear diversity more than racism, equality more than misogyny, democracy more than fascism, immigrants more than authoritarians, the poor more than corrupt billionaires, and empathy more than cruelty.

What I am finding now is that my audience is getting younger as I get older, which is a very good thing as you know - you don't want them to get older as you get older. Russell Banks

Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing. Russell Banks

One of the things I have tried to do with this book and with all of them really is avoid that simple, easy, reductionist view of motivation and to show we do things for a complex net of reasons, a real braid of reasons. Russell Banks

Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life. Russell Banks

I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature. Russell Banks

If you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter while you are writing than while you are hanging out with your pals or in any other line of work. Russell Banks

Russell Banks: The way I feel about every book is this: you don't finish it, you abandon it. All of my books have in some sense failed, otherwise I wouldn't write another one. If I wrote the perfect book, I wouldn't have to write again, and I wouldn't want to. That's not true for everyone, but it's true for me. I could walk away then. But so far I haven't managed to do it.

There is a wonderful intelligence to the unconscious. It’s always smarter than we are. Russell Banks

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for. Russell Banks

One of the most difficult things to say to another person is, 'I hope that you will love me for no good reason.' But it is what we all want and rarely dare to say to one another, to our children, to our parents and mates, to our friends, and to strangers, especially to strangers who have neither good, nor bad reasons to love us. Russell Banks

Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves. Russell Banks

It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with. Russell Banks

We know that people we love are both good and bad, but we expect strangers to be one or the other. Russell Banks

it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art. Russell Banks

I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting. Russell Banks

Examine what happens when you read. Young writers tend to forget or ignore what’s actually going on when they’re reading. Which is to say, when one reads, one has oral and visual hallucinations and it’s the writer’s job to control those oral and visual hallucinations. So I’m always trying to make young writers think about what goes on when they’re sitting in a chair and reading fiction. RUSSELL BANKS

I saw Jesus at the bowling alley, slinging nothing but gutter balls.

 

Heaven on Earth

by Kristin Berkey-Abbott

I saw Jesus at the bowling alley, slinging nothing but gutter balls. He said, “You’ve gotta love a hobby that allows ugly shoes.” He lit a cigarette and bought me a beer. So I invited him to dinner.   I knew the Lord couldn’t see my house in its current condition, so I gave it an out of season spring cleaning. What to serve for dinner? Fish—the logical choice, but after 2000 years, he must grow weary of everyone’s favorite seafood dishes. I thought of my Granny’s ham with Coca Cola glaze, but you can’t serve that to a Jewish boy. Likewise pizza—all my favorite toppings involve pork.   In the end, I made us an all-dessert buffet. We played Scrabble and Uno and Yahtzee and listened to Bill Monroe. Jesus has a healthy appetite for sweets, I’m happy to report. He told strange stories which I’ve puzzled over for days now.   We’ve got an appointment for golf on Wednesday. Ordinarily I don’t play, and certainly not in this humidity. But the Lord says he knows a grand miniature golf course with fiberglass mermaids and working windmills and the best homemade ice cream you ever tasted. Sounds like Heaven to me.

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From Whistling Past the Graveyard, Pudding House Publications, 2004.

How the Netherlands Bent Bureaucracy Into Something Beautiful

https://reasonstobecheerful.world/breakthrough-method-netherlands/

Vivienne Flesher Art

 http://vivienne-flesher.squarespace.com/work/digital-ab3w5

Can Tea Help With Asthma Symptoms?

https://asthma.net/living/tea

By Ashlen Wilder

Tea is warming, comforting, and soothing...but can it help with asthma symptoms? Many people in the Asthma.net community report that tea is helpful for asthma symptoms that they experience, like mucus, a sore throat, and dryness. It makes sense that a warm beverage would possibly help relieve these symptoms, but it made me wonder if there is research that proves the benefits of tea for asthma.

Tea and asthma

I am an avid tea drinker; if you open a particular cupboard in my kitchen, you will be bombarded by falling tea boxes and bags. My partner and I enjoy sharing a pot of tea every once in a while, but he is more of a coffee drinker. He reports that coffee helps with asthma symptoms, and on days where he is experiencing an asthma flare-up, he'll gravitate towards making a hot cup of black coffee. Coffee may help relieve some asthma symptoms, and it made me ponder if tea could be helpful for my partner as well.

Caffeinated tea

Caffeine has been proven to be a mild bronchodilator and can improve lung function for two to four hours after being consumed. Certain teas like black, green, oolong, and white tea contain caffeine, and black teas typically contain the highest amounts of caffeine. Coffee generally has double the amount of caffeine compared to tea (even black tea), so if you are used to drinking coffee, the bronchodilator effects may feel weaker when drinking tea due to its lower caffeine content. Therefore, a few cups of tea may help you feel bronchodilator effects similar to coffee.¹

Herbal tea

One herbal tea that actually has a decent amount of research to back up the claimed benefits is ginger. Several proven benefits of ginger according to various studies include induced relaxation of smooth airway muscle and reduction of allergic asthma inflammation. Licorice tea is another herbal tea that may provide some relief for asthma symptoms. Glycyrrhizin is a constituent found in licorice, and when combined with Salbutamol, it was shown to have synergistic anti-asthmatic effects in rats and guinea pigs.^2-6

Hot liquids for asthma

Hot or warm liquids like tea may feel soothing, especially when dealing with asthma-related symptoms such as a sore or dry throat, mucus, or cough. However, there isn't much research or studies conducted specifically on the effects of hot liquids and asthma. That doesn't mean that drinking tea or hot liquids is not helpful, it just means that there currently isn't science to back it. Please note - beverages that are too hot can actually cause esophageal spasms, so be mindful that your hot beverage is at a safe drinking temperature.⁷

Takeaway

It is important to be aware that drinking tea is not a treatment for asthma, nor should it be used in place of any asthma medications. However, some might find drinking tea to feel soothing or pleasant for the throat or mucus. Tea that contains caffeine may act as a mild bronchodilator, and herbal teas such as ginger and licorice may help with inflammation of the airways and allergic asthma symptoms.

Adobo Sauce Tastes like Pipe Tobacco but I love it

 Adobo sauce, particularly when used with chipotle peppers (smoked jalapeños), is often described as having a deep, earthy, and intense smoky flavor, which some consumers interpret as having a "tobacco-like" or "pipe tobacco" quality . This is largely due to the wood-smoking process used to dry the jalapeños, often using pecan or other woods that provide a distinct aromatic profile.  Here is a breakdown of why you are likely experiencing this taste and how to manage it: Why It Tastes Like Pipe Tobacco      The Smoking Process: Chipotle peppers are jalapeños that have been dried and smoked for 10-12 hours. This intense smoking process gives them a bold flavor that can be mistaken for tobacco or woody notes.     Ingredient Combination: The sauce is a blend of vinegar, garlic, oregano, and tomatoes, which creates a complex, bitter, and "earthy" flavor.     Specific Spice Profiles: High levels of cumin in certain brands can add to this earthy, sometimes overwhelming taste.   How to Reduce the Tobacco Flavor If you find the taste too intense, you can balance it by modifying the dish:      Dilute with Fats: Blend the sauce with mayonnaise, sour cream, or plain Greek yogurt to make a milder spread.     Add Sweetness/Acidity: To offset the bitter, earthy, tobacco notes, try adding honey, lime juice, or a little extra tomato paste.     Use Less Sauce: Use only the liquid and fewer peppers, as the heat and smoke are concentrated in the peppers themselves.

"They may steal the sun, but they cannot steal the light." - Samih al-Qasim

“When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals.”

― Edward Snowden  

Trigger Snap Clip Hardware vs Bolt Snap Clip (My dogs need the trigger snap). They have opened the bolt snap accidentally too mant times.

 

Still Wheezing? Why Your Albuterol Inhaler Fails & Medical Next Steps

 https://ubiehealth.com/doctors-note/albuterol-inhaler-still-wheezing-fail-next-plan-47

After a harrowing mental health crisis, a family’s giving to the Broad Institute’s research tops $1 billion

Dr. Evan Macosko, a researcher and professor at the Broad Institute, which recently received a $280 million gift to support research into bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Broad Institute

Few people can say their battle with bipolar disorder inspired a $1 billion injection into research — but few people are Jonathan Stanley.

The Stanley Family Foundation, where he sits on the board, will donate $280 million to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to investigate potential new treatments for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, the Broad recently announced.

That commitment launches the family’s philanthropy into a new stratosphere. They already gave more than $825 million to the Broad, including a $650 million donation that was the largest ever in psychiatric research in 2014. The money is the life’s earnings of Stanley’s now-deceased parents, Vada Stanley and Ted Stanley, who made his fortune heading MBI, a Connecticut company that markets and sells collectible books, jewelry, coins, and other products.

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“He knew eventually he wanted to focus in on one thing,” Jonathan Stanley said of his dad’s charitable ambitions. “I gave him that one thing.”

Restrained in a psychiatric unit after a terrifying bout of psychosis in the 1980s, Stanley wasn’t sure that he could ever return to being the high-achieving son set to follow in his father’s high-achieving footsteps.

Stanley was a Williams College student studying abroad in London when the symptoms first hit: swells of high energy and racing thoughts that bordered on delusional. He felt like the smartest man in the world, on the cusp of building a business empire. He called his parents repeatedly asking for more money. Then, he would swing into episodes of deep depression.

His illness hit a fever pitch during a trip to New York City. Paranoid that the people around him were secret agents, he didn’t sleep for three days. He wandered into a deli and jumped on a milk carton to save himself from nonexistent radiation he thought was seeping out of the floor. The police brought him to the psych ward.

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Stanley, now age 60, was one of the lucky few. During his seven-week stay at the hospital, his doctors found a medication combination that tempered the bouts of manic highs and depressive lows that define bipolar disorder. He recovered, went to law school, and had a fulfilling career.

His parents were traumatized by the experience and determined to keep other families from having to go through the same pain and uncertainty. In 2007, the family founded the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad to explore the genetic links that could explain why Stanley and others like him develop the disease in the first place.

A portrait of Ted and Vada Stanley hangs in the lobby of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research in Cambridge on March 17.Lane Turner/Globe Staff

More than 4 percent of US adults experience bipolar disorder at some point, the National Institute of Mental Health estimates. And while the prevalence of schizophrenia is low — somewhere between 0.25 and 0.64 percent in the United States — it’s a leading cause of mortality in young people.

Bipolar disorder is marked by episodes of mania and depression that can interfere with decision-making. Schizophrenia affects memory and thinking and can cause hallucinations, delusions, or disorganized speech or behavior. Both diseases can appear in different forms and can involve psychosis, making diagnosis difficult.

For years, there were virtually no treatment options for either disorder. Lithium, one of the medications that worked for Jonathan Stanley, is a mood stabilizer used to combat bipolar disorder, but scientists still don’t know exactly how or why it works.

“It works sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes,” said Benjamin Neale, codirector of the Stanley Center.

That’s why Neale and the Stanley Center’s community of more than 100 scientists are investigating which genes might be involved in the development of these disorders.

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On the pathway of drug discovery and development, the center’s work sits at the early end: sequencing the DNA of patients to identify genetic variations, and then understanding how those changes influence the nervous system.

Scientists can then use these discoveries to find and test molecules that could temper the effects of the genetic variations.

“Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are amongst the illnesses with the largest unmet medical need of anywhere in medicine,” Neale said. “There’s huge potential for impact, but there’s a lot of work to do to get there.”

The Ted and Vada Stanley Building at the Broad Institute on Ames Street in Cambridge.Lane Turner/Globe Staff

The new gift from the Stanleys provides a guaranteed financial foundation amid an uncertain federal research funding landscape. Scientists have the space to try new methods without fear of disappearing funds.

Already, the Stanley Center has been involved in massive genomic sequencing studies that have identified some early genetic variant targets. A 2016 study there found people with specific variants of the immune system gene C4 have an increased risk for developing schizophrenia.

“We have a desperate need to better understand the root causes of these conditions, and the work going on at Broad’s Stanley Center gives patients and their loved ones some of the best hope that we have,” National Alliance on Mental Illness chief medical officer Dr. Ken Duckworth said in a news release.

There was never any doubt that the foundation would continue to give huge sums to the Stanley Center, Stanley said.

“First of all, everybody’s super impressed by the Broad,” he said. “But probably most of all, to me at least, it’s because it’s what my dad wanted.”

The Ted and Vada Stanley Building at the Broad Institute in Cambridge.Lane Turner/Globe Staff

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Marin Wolf can be reached at marin.wolf@globe.com.

Life is short. That's all there is to say. Get what you can from the present—thoughtfully, justly. Unrestrained moderation. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg. J.K. ROWLING

a vast amount of the advantage, power and insulation from the vicissitudes of history we had is gone. That sucks. It would be foolish to deny the transformative impact T***p has had on the history of our time. It’s vast. We just don’t know yet where that transformation is leading.

 article by Josh Marshall