A Bob's Life: Monday Musings

Monday, March 23, 2026

Monday Musings - March 23, 2026

1. Monday has arrived again and with it the start of the workweek. This is the fourth and penultimate Monday of March. There are 40 Mondays remaining in 2026.

Railroad Drawbridge over Loxahatchee River
Jupiter, Florida
March 22, 2026

2. We were blessed with a couple gorgeous weather days for the weekend. Temperatures made it into the 80s for our enjoyment under clear skies with low humidity yesterday. I managed a 19-mile ride on yesterday over a modified route. Along the way, I took a great image of the railroad drawbridge over the Loxahatchee River from the Florida A1A bridge. I was out a bit earlier than normal and the traffic was light.

3. Chris and I are departing on a trip to Baltimore for Easter tomorrow. We are very concerned about the situation at the airports due to the Congressional standoff and now the threat of ICE deployments. We are going to be arriving almost an hour earlier than normal, I hope there is room in the lounge once we clear security. I am already checking projected TSA wait times.

4. Today [Sunday, March 22] the administration announced ICE agents will take the place of some TSA agents, although as the former national security officials at The Steady State note, the legality of moving ICE agents into TSA positions isn’t clear. Tonight Trump admitted he is not interested in any deal with the Democrats to fund the Department of Homeland Security unless Democrats also agree to the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and to vote, and which is widely understood to be a measure designed to suppress voting. Trump also includes in the measure an end to mail-in voting, and an attack on transgender Americans. (Letters from an American)

5. ICE personnel, including agents from Homeland Security Investigations, are planning to be at 14 airports, according to a document obtained by The Times. The airports include Newark, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston and Phoenix, as well as Kennedy and LaGuardia in New York. (NY Times)

6. Today in History. On March 23, 1839, the initials “O.K.” are first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for “oll korrect,” a popular slang misspelling of “all correct” at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.

During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as “kewl” for “cool” or “DZ” for “these,” the “in crowd” of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included “KY” for “No use” (“know yuse”), “KG” for “No go” (“Know go”), and “OW” for all right (“oll wright”).