Events

Amtrak has big plans—especially for Chicago—if it gets a piece of President Biden's $2-trillon infrastructure bill: Chicago passenger-rail riders ought to thrilled. A proposed map released by Amtrak shows rail service out of the Windy City absolutely exploding, with enhanced service to Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and other locales, plus new service to cities including Minneapolis/St. Paul, Green Bay, Iowa City, Rockford, Cleveland and Louisville. According to spokesman Marc Magliari...

Someone has lost her unsupervised time for a while: I have no idea why she attacked the table. When I last saw the room, all the pillows were on the couch and the table had straight edges. That was an hour ago. Cassie is now confined to my office until further notice.

At the dog park: After the dog park, phase I: Phase II: Not that I was trying to read, mind you. Sometimes one makes sacrifices for one's companions.

Back in May, which seems like ten years ago rather than ten months, I started going through all my CDs in the order that I acquired them. I don't listen every day, and some (like Bizet's Carmen) take a bit more time than others (like a 4-song mini CD of Buddy Holly songs). I've now arrived at about the middle of my collection, with a set of four CDs I bought on 19 September 1993. Holy Alternative, Batman. I had just started doing one shift a week at WLUW-Chicago, Loyola University's radio station...

We've spent 54 weeks in the looking-glass world of Covid-19. And while we may have so much more brain space than we had during the time a certain malignant personality invaded it every day, life has not entirely stopped. Things continue to improve, though: A local Evanston bookstore has joined a class-action suit against book publishers and Amazon for fixing prices. Natalie Shure criticizes the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, saying they have "dramatically exited one country's putrecsent ruling...

In case you needed proof that the world didn't suddenly become an Enlightenment paradise on January 20th, I give you: Georgia Republicans (and perhaps soon Florida Republicans) seem to have blundered badly with their new anti-voter law. Frank Bruni wants to retire the phrase "gun control." In a shocking development, police brutality at protests aimed at curbing police brutality have sparked yet more protests. Illinois auto dealers, a collectively useless lot of people who provide a parasitic service...

The Ever Given continues to plug up the Suez Canal, halting some $10 billion a day in global trade: Canal authorities said on Saturday that dredgers had managed to dig out the rear of the ship on Friday night, freeing its rudder, and that by Saturday afternoon they had dredged 18 meters down into the canal’s eastern bank, where the ship’s bow was stuck solid. But after a salvage team failed once more to dislodge the four-football-field-long leviathan from the sand bank where it ran aground on Tuesday...

Cassie, maintaining her dignity in public:

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Cassie is my 2½-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in July 2020. A couple of things have changed since then, not least of which that Parker took his last walk late last autumn. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006 and who died 18 Novemgber 2020; and Cassie, whom I adopted on 16 March 2021. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United...

Josh Marshall looks at the results of this week's election in Israel and concludes that only one thing has stopped the country yet again from forming a government: It’s all such a mess there’s a serious discussion of forming a short term government which would simply pass a law barring anyone currently under indictment, as Netanyahu is, from serving as Prime Minister. In other words, a government whose sole act would be to remove Netanyahu from the political scene before yet another election. This all...