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Greetings from the far left coast. I hope everyone enjoyed a lovely Easter weekend. We are in a cycle where three or four days of gorgeous weather alternate with weeks of rain. The weekend was glorious.
Even heathen may have noticed that Easter moves around on the calendar. Catherine Boeckmann at Almanac explains that this is because Easter is based on the lunar cycles of the Jewish calendar, unlike Christmas which is fixed to a solar calendar and near the winter solstice.
Easter is a “movable feast,” so it doesn’t happen on the same date from year to year. In the Gregorian calendar, it is always observed on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. However, Easter can be observed between April 4 and May 8 in the Eastern Orthodox Church. (When Is Easter 2024? | How Is Easter's Date Determined?)
This year Easter happened to land on March 31. On Friday President Biden issued a statement recognizing Sunday as Transgender Day of Visibility, which is on March 31 every year, has been around since 2009, and Biden has recognized in previous years. The Trump campaign, Mendacious Mike Johnson, Elise Stefanik, Taylor Greene, and the rest of the conservative sphere of victimization were much agitated and aggrieved by this insult to "Catholics and Christians" on a day to be reserved for celebration of Easter and Easter alone. There was much sputtering and spluttering about blasphemy, mockery, and the "years-long assault" on Christian faith.
Catholics and Christians?
Never mind that Joe Biden is by all accounts a devout Catholic, which I take to mean he is a Christian. He issued an Easter statement extending his and the First Lady's "warmest wishes to Christians around the world celebrating Easter Sunday," remembering "Jesus' sacrifice" and "the promise of Christ's Resurrection," closing with "From our family to yours, happy Easter and may God bless you."
As further insult to Catholics and Christians, "overtly religious egg designs" were banned from the White House Easter Egg hunt, as they have been under every president since 1976 because, well, separation of church and state. One might think that Mendacious Mike Johnson would applaud Biden's violation of that principle in his Easter statement. Well. No. No one would think Johnson possesses that much integrity.
As often happens, ignorance and indifference to truth were at the bottom of the kerfuffle. No amount of scorn for these scoundrels would be sufficient.
Eugene Daniels, Rachel Bade, Ryan Lizza, Playbook: The political war over Easter, Politico, March 31, 2024
Josh Boak, The Trump camp and the White House clash over Biden’s recognition of ‘Transgender Day of Visibility,’ Associated Press, March 31, 2024
Cathy Young, The Right Invents a Biden ‘War on Easter,' The Bulwark, April 1, 2024
The best comment I have seen thus far on the NBC-Ronna Romney McDaniel fiasco comes from former RNC chair Reince Priebus, now an ABC contributor:
The case on Ronna that I find to be obvious for someone like me who’s a contributor here…I’ve never been hired without the management bringing me in, meeting with people, doing interviews where I wasn’t on a signed contract, finding whether or not I could get off the talking points or not. The root of the problem is that the management never brought her in before the contract was signed so that all of this stuff could get worked out, and that was a huge failure in my opinion. (Kelly Garrity, Former RNC chair dissects Ronna McDaniel’s NBC ouster, Politico, March 31, 2024)
Benjamin Netanyahu "downplayed U.S. fears of a humanitarian catastrophe" if Israel invades Rafah. He told a bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation that people in Rafah will be able to leave to avoid the fighting: “People just move, they move with their tents. People moved down (to Rafah). They can move back up.” Gaza residents must be sleeping more easily now knowing they are safe.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in Tennessee and Pennsylvania propose legislation to keep citizens of their states safe by preventing government from “intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere" in a resurrection of the decades-old chemtrails conspiracy theory, although the word "chemtrails" is not used in Tennessee legislation banning the “intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances.”
As Adam Gabbatt sums it up in an article at The Guardian:
Proponents of the debunked chemtrails idea believe that the cloudy white lines created by airplane emissions are chemicals being released into the atmosphere. The idea is that the government, or shadowy private organizations, are pumping out toxic chemicals, with the aim being anything from modifying the weather to controlling a population’s minds.
This is not happening, scientists say.
“There’s no such thing as chemtrails,” said Alan Robock, a climate science professor at Rutgers university.
“If you look at the sky, sometimes you see contrails from airplanes – condensation trails – and they’re just made out of water. It’s the same thing that happens in the winter when you breathe out and you see a little cloud in front of your mouth. It’s a mixture of warm, humid air with cold, dry air.” (An attack of the vapours: Tennessee bill endorses chemtrails conspiracy theory, March 31, 2024)
Memo from the sports desk. I am honored to be an honorary member of the Hollingshed Creek Clemson Club. Honorary because I am a USC grad. My brother, Trani, and our friend Mendal Bouknight are Clemson alumni. For readers who are not family and childhood friends, we grew up in the country in the South Carolina Midlands between Irmo and Chapin. Hollingshed Creek ran through the woods between Mendal's house and ours.
All of us reveled in Clemson's unanticipated March Madness run to the Elite Eight. It came to an end with a tough loss to Alabama on Saturday (89–82). That loss did not detract from a fine season and a great tournament run.
It has been a grand basketball season for my home state with the Boy Gamecocks also gaining a spot in the tournament, although they did not fare as well as Clemson, bowing out in the opening round. The agony of defeat was intensified by coming at the hands of the University of Oregon, so I heard about it the next day every time I tuned in to Oregon Public Broadcasting on the radio.
The Lady Gamecocks advanced to the Final Four undefeated for the second straight year. Next up they will face the winner of today's UConn–Left Coast USC game. This could not have been anticipated when the season began with all five starters and the top reserve from last season departed. Coach Dawn Staley's take on this year's group:
I give into allowing them to be their silly selves. Like they're really silly. They talk a lot about nothing. But some of that talk is holding each other accountable. They talk to each other in…ways that we've got to close the door and just kind of give them their space. But they enjoy each other. That's who they are. (Michael Voepel, Top-seeded South Carolina Gamecocks advance to Final Four, ESPN, March 31, 2024)
Today we will be rooting for Iowa to upend LSU and its controversial coach Kim Mulkey, who is not a fan favorite in this precinct.
Baseball season opened with a gambling scandal, uniform controversy, and a rocky start for my Phillies against division-rival Atlanta. In first two games ace Zach Wheeler pitched well while numero two-o ace Aaron Nola and the bullpen did not in blowout losses 9–3 and 12–4. We salvaged something from the weekend with a 5–4 win in yesterday's finale, highlighted by a solid outing from starter Ranger Suarez, a seventh-inning rally, and redemption for the bullpen, which gave up one run in four innings. José Alvarado earned the save with a scoreless ninth.
Is nonpareil pitching and slugging star Shohei Ohtani the unwitting victim of "massive theft" by former interpreter and friend Ippei Mizuhara to cover Mizuhara's gambling debts—"at least $4.5 million in wire transfers were sent from Ohtani's bank account to a California bookmaker who is under federal investigation"—or is something darker afoot?
What did he know and when did he know it? We all hope that Ohtani, a singular talent and seemingly a decent guy, is innocent, and he may well be. He denies knowledge, and Mizuhara has given several different accounts. The sooner it all shakes out and the story is put to rest, the better for everyone.
Major league baseball teams took the field this weekend sporting controversial new uniforms designed by Nike. Why the controversy?
One widely circulated photo showed underwear through the new mesh pants. The reception has been harsh on the bottoms and on the tops, which one player called papery, another like a knockoff jersey from T.J. Maxx.
Paul Solman reported on it all during Wednesday's edition of the PBS NewsHour (Major League Baseball opens season with controversy over ‘papery’ uniforms). Solmon quoted Phillies shortstop Trea Turner for the players take on the uniforms: "I know everyone hates them." He also managed to find someone with favorable view, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi: "I find it kind of sexy, I got to say." Well. Mizrahi did go on to acknowledge that a lot of people find the sheerness of the uniforms "a little creepy."
New at Portable Bohemia Substack:
While Ukraine and Gaza Bleed, March 23, 2024. On a recent morning I came to a section titled “Confessions of a Slavophile” in the July and Au-gust 1877 issue of Dostoevsky’s A Writer’s Diary. Here…read more>>
The Ebb and Flow of This Writing Life, March 29, 2024. Portable Bohemia was launched in June 2016 as a successor to my earlier blogs Memo from the Fringes and House Red with the promise…read more>>
Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt
