6 May—First, hearty congratulations to the consolidation committee. No, not the borough consolidation committee. Rather, the Temporary Regional School Study Committee that got the ball rolling on marrying Wamogo and Litchfield to create Region 20. The State Board of Education unanimously approved the plan. Just goes to show that doing things by the rules and not rushing the process can sometimes work. The four-town referendum to parturiate or abort Region 20 will likely come in June. And hope springs.

On the subject of abortion, why the big deal over the leak of Justice Sam Alito’s draft of the Supreme Court’s forthcoming anti-abortion decision? Certainly the leak itself—the first in SCOTUS history—was newsworthy. But, despite what the dogmatically anti-abortion judges had intimated during their confirmation hearings about silly things like res judicata and stare decisis (which don’t really matter to the Supremes anyway) and being reluctant to reverse prior SCOTUS decisions, who really thought they’d give abortion a chance?

I mean, really? On the other hand, it’s only Alito’s draft. And hope springs. Yeah, right.

The State of Israel turned 74 on 4 May. No reason to celebrate it here, of course. Unlike Cinco de Mayo—Fifth of May in Spanish—which, however, is not Mexico’s Independence Day; that’s 16 September.

Rather, Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexico’s victory over the Second French Empire at the First Battle of Puebla in 1862. General Ignacio Zaragoza led the victorious charge of the smaller, poorly equipped Mexican force against the larger and better-armed French army. The French not long thereafter defeated the Mexicans at the Second Battle of Puebla and occupied Mexico City. But nobody talks about that. Wonder why?

No surprise, then, that Cinco de Mayo is more popular in the United States than in Mexico. And it’ll probably be even more popular here as more Mexicans come into the country by fair means or foul. Before long, Cinco de Mayo may even be declared a federal legal holiday as well as a legal holiday in Connecticut. Like Juneteenth. God save us.

Karl Marx would have turned 204 yesterday, had he not kicked the bucket in 1883. In London, where he’s buried, because he was such a pain in the ass, no other country would have him. He never seriously considered coming to bourgeois America, a greenhouse for capitalism, as he opined, where work was the key to wealth and wealth was the only object of work.

So what’s wrong with that? Only slaves work because they have no other option.

And, contrary to popular belief, Karl Marx wasn’t Jewish. His grandfathers on both sides were in fact rabbis, but by the time Karl was born his parents had done the smart thing and converted. So Karl was baptized into the Lutheran church, along with his six surviving siblings, in 1824 . . .