Posted Sunday morning, January 20, 2019. Good morning fellow bird nerds and welcome to our Sunday morning sanity-saving virtual bird watch. Our first stop is appropriate for the cold, snow, and ice here in upstate New York, the tip of South America to see... The Macaroni Penguin is part of a larger group known as crested penguins, all found on small islands in the southernmost reaches of the world's oceans. All crested penguins are distinguished by eye-catching yellow crests and reddish eyes, beaks, and feet. The Macaroni Penguin's bristly-looking orange-and-yellow crest is particularly impressive, reaching from the center of the... Continue reading

Mined from the notebooks, Wednesday afternoon, January 16, 2019. Posted Saturday morning, January 19. Finally saw my back surgeon today for the routine follow-up I was supposed to have last April. I had to skip that appointment. I was scheduled to see him practically on the day Mrs M's tumor was diagnosed. I had an X ray today and I guess things in there look like they're holding together but I’ve been having a lot of trouble lately standing and walking---worse than usual---so Dr R decided to refer me for CAT scan to really get a good look at what’s... Continue reading

Posted Friday morning, January 18, 2019. Great Blue Heron in flight over a pond in Massachusetts. Photo by Evan Lipton, courtesy of the Macauley Library via the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. All winter two blue herons hunkered in the frozen marsh, like two columns of blue smoke. What they ate I can’t imagine, unless it was the small laces of snow that settled in the ruckus of the cattails, or the glazed windows of ice under the tired pitchforks of their feet— so the answer is they ate nothing, and nothing good could come of that. They were mired in... Continue reading

Somewhere along Quaker Road, on the way to the grocery store, Leptondale, New York. This morning, Thursday, January 17, 2019. Continue reading

Mined from the notebooks, Saturday, January 12, 2019. Posted Tuesday morning, January 15. They need him to roar and beat his chest. He needs them to shriek and jabber. It's a banding of weak and frightened brothers.... President of the hideous men: Donald Trump at a rally in Cleveland. November 5, 2018. Photo by Carolyn Kaster/AP via the Washington Post. Stunts. The shutdown. The sudden intransigence on paying for the Wall---now! Today! This minute! It’s all for show. He’s putting on a display for his mobs of hideous men whose screaming red faces he’s missing at his rallies. He’s trapped... Continue reading

Posted Friday morning, January 11, 2019. “Everything about white supremacy and white nationalism goes against who we are as a nation. Steve’s language is reckless, wrong, and has no place in our society...” ---House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy responding to Iowa Congressman Steve King’s too candid for Republicans’ comfort comments in a New York Times profile. Via Jake Tapper’s Twitter feed. It’s amazing to me that McCarthy appears surprised by King. It's like they've never talked, or even bumped into each other in the halls on their way to a caucus meeting… "You mean he's in our party? He works... Continue reading

Adapted from the Twitter feed Monday, January 7, 2019. Posted Sunday morning, January 13. Elizabeth Warren on the stump with Hillary Clinton in Manchester, New Hampshire. October, 2016. Photo by Andrew Harnik/AP via the Guardian. Annnd...once again the political media disappears itself from the story it creates. They’re adept at this. It’s uncanny. It’s almost like a magical power. "The political-insider chatter is already suggesting that Warren might have a “likability” problem, just like the one that supposedly was Clinton’s downfall."---Karen Tumulty. "Elizabeth Warren has something Hillary Clinton didn't". The Washington Post, January 7. 2019. I wonder who those chattering... Continue reading

Updated below, Monday afternoon, January 14. Posted very early Sunday morning, January 13, 2019. Originally posted Saturday, December 17, 2016. “Donald Trump is such a Russian toy that I'm starting to wonder if inside of him is a series of progressively smaller white nationalists.”---Comedian Kate Willett on Twitter, December 16, 2016. As folks like to say on Twitter, “This held up well.” Except those folks are usually being ironic. Willett’s tweet and my post from December---December 2016!---have actually held up pretty well, it’s just that things are worse than was generally known at the time. Back then it looked liked... Continue reading

Updated Monday morning, January 14, 2019. New posts below but before scrolling down please read... Thanks one and all for helping us get through the weekend. I think we're ok the next couple of days and I like I said below, I'm working on the contingency plans to carry us through until Mrs M's disability starts. But the end of the week and next weekend are looking iffy, so if you can help us out a little bit more, either through PayPal or zelle (using my email address lmannion109@yahoo.com) that would be swell. Meantime, as it says up top, there... Continue reading

This post has been moved. Sorry for inconvenience. Please follow the link to read "House Republican Leader: There's no place in the Republican Party for Republican Congressmen". Continue reading

Mined from the notebooks, Saturday morning, December 29, 2018. Posted Thursday afternoon, January 10, 2019. The encyclopedia illustration for the entry on the banality of evil: Christian Bale as Vice-President Dick Cheney in an undisclosed location in “Vice”. I’m sure I’ll see it. “Vice". At some point. Maybe when it comes out on DVD. Right now, though, I’m not itching to run right out. Part of my reluctance is due to my lifelong habit of procrastination when it comes to doing homework, and I feel like I have all kinds of cramming to do to truly appreciate the joke. I... Continue reading

Posted Wednesday morning, January 9, 2019. John Basset, mild-mannered Canadian owner of the USFL’s Tampa Bay Bandits, who once threatened to punch rival New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump “right on the mouth.” Circa 1984. Photo by Boris Spremo, courtesy of MyKawartha.com. Some serendipitous reading. Last night while Donald Trump was boring the nation but making suckers of the networks who agreed to broadcast another one of his sales pitches for himself in the hope he’d make a spectacle of himself that would boost the eyeballs and clicks, Oliver Mannion and I, joined by Mrs M, continued listening to Jeff... Continue reading

Adapted from the Twitter feed and posted Tuesday morning, January 8, 2019. President Donald Trump’s planned prime-time address on immigration Tuesday night put the broadcast networks in a difficult — and familiar — position as they debated whether to carry the address live.---Dylan Byers, delivering the corporate line for NBC News, Monday, January 7, 2019. No, NBC News---and CBS and ABC---once again you’ve put yourself in this position through your institutional vanity, timidity, greed, and laziness. This is more than routine. It’s your standard operating procedure. You value "balance" and "objectivity" and not being perceived as "biased" by which you... Continue reading

Posted very early Monday morning, January 7, 2019. The fundamental dishonesty of adults never fails to amaze her, their assumption that you’ll believe whatever they say just because they’re grown-ups and you’re a kid. As if the history of adults’ dealing with adolescents were one long, unbroken continuum of truth-telling, as if no kid was ever given a reason to distrust anyone over the age of twenty-five. ---from “Empire Falls” by Richard Russo. Continue reading

Posted late Sunday night, January 6, 2019. He'd lost some weight, and considering he was thin as a rake at the best of times and his body seemed mostly composed of cartilage and attitude, his appearance was becoming worrisome. ---from "The Prisoner of Heaven" by Carlos Ruiz Zafron. Continue reading

Mined from the notebooks, Sunday morning, December 30, 2018. Posted Saturday morning, January 5, 2019. So, here we are, down in the territory of the Philadelphia Eagles---or as it’s pronounced and even spelled not just on fan posters but in newspaper headlines, Iggles---and I have no idea how the Iggles did this season. I know they’re struggling to defend their Super Bowl championship. II know they’re still contending for a playoff spot. I knew that before the fans I met at the bagel shop clued me in. I didn’t know what seed, where they stand in their division, or even... Continue reading

Mined from the notebooks, Tuesday morning, January 1, 2019. Posted Thursday morning, January 3. Statue of Baron von Steuben overlooking the field that were the parade grounds for Washington’s army during the encampment at Valley Forge in 1788. This morning, around 8 o’clock, Tuesday, January 1, 2019. Neither would it be von Steuben’s finest hour. Rather than confront Simco’s smaller force, he abandoned the magazine in a hasty retreat that only confirmed the reputation for ineffectual bluster he had already acquired, “The Baron is so unpopular,” Lafayette lamented several days later, “that I do not know where to put him.”... Continue reading

Posted Monday morning, December 31, 2018. A class act finishes on a high note: Gov. Paul LePage signed off on the state’s first-in-the-nation ranked-choice election to Congress on Friday, but also left a note of protest against the voter-approved election law that propelled Democratic state Rep. Jared Golden to a victory over incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin in the 2nd District. LePage initialed Golden’s certificate of election but also wrote “stolen election” beside it before sharing a photo of the certificate on Twitter with an additional comment. I’ve signed off on the CD2 election result as it’s no longer... Continue reading

Posted Friday afternoon, December 28, 2018. It's been a very hard year here in Mannionville, and while many things have gotten much better, we're still struggling with other things, one of which is our finances. The end of the month is always difficult so once again we could use some help. The electric bill and the car insurance are due. That's about $500 right there. And we'd like to go down to visit Mrs M's family for New Year's and the gas and tolls for that trip come to about $30 so... If you like what goes on around here... Continue reading

Posted Friday morning, December 28, 2018. Members of the Wedding: Pop Mannion, his new beloved daughter-in-law, the brand-new Mrs M, some guy in a rented tux, and Mom Mannion. May 28, 1988. Once again, longtime blogging stalwart and friend, that vagabond scholar, Batocchio has taken on the task of assembling the Jon Swift Memorial Blogger Roundup (Company Motto: Best Posts of the Year, Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves). The Roundup was started by our late lamented comrade Al Weisel, known far and wide as the “reasonable conservative” Jon Swift---it always amazed me how many actual conservatives never got the joke,... Continue reading

Posted Thursday morning, December 27, 2018 This is like flunking Human Being 101, which I know he does just about every day, but you'd think that once in a while he'd manage at least D on the quiz, and this should've been his chance. It’s like one of those deliberately easy assignments teachers sometimes give to help struggling students improve their grades… A 7-year-old South Carolina girl left cookies out for Santa Claus even though President Donald Trump told her that belief in the big guy at her age was “marginal.” As part of his Christmas Eve duties, Trump took... Continue reading

Posted Thursday morning, December 27, 2018. “Buy More Me!”: Trump with his spokesmodel Melania arrives in Iraq to pitch himself to the troops. Wednesday, December 26, 2018. Photo by Saul Loeb, courtesy AFP, via Newsweek. He lies. All the time. With every breath. Everything he says is a lie. Even things he says that may be true or contain a kernel of truth. Even things that contain numbers he didn’t pull out of his hat or at least gestures at numbers in some report he’s been told about although of course never read. All lies. They’re all lies because they’re... Continue reading

Posted Christmas morning, December 25, 2018. The view from our window. Seven a.m., Sunday, December 23, 2018. That’s the moon in the center window pane, not the Star of Bethlehem, so I didn’t follow it, just admired it until the sun was fully up. Regular readers will know why this is one of our saddest and yet most joyful Christmases. One reason it’s joyful is you. Thank you for your concern, help, love, and support. Without you I don’t know if we could have made it through this difficult year. We’re on our way up to my brother Lyle and... Continue reading

Posted Sunday morning, December 23, 2018. Ready for the day. Barnes & Noble cafe, Newburgh, New York. Eight a.m. Saturday, December 22, 2018. Barnes & Noble has been opening early this week. Mrs M and I took advantage yesterday morning and sneaked out for coffee while the Mannion guys were still asleep. We were the first customers there. Looks like we even beat the barista to the counter, but she was just busy behind the display case, putting out batches of croissants and scones hot from the oven. I had plans to sneak out again this morning, this time on... Continue reading

Posted Saturday night, December 22, 2018. President Jimmy Carter at his desk in the Oval Office, December 13, 1977. White House Staff Photo courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library via Loyola University Chicago Digital Special Collections. Following up on this morning's post: sometimes virtue in a politician is a vice or at least a flaw… The entire episode [Carter’s fight with Democratic members of Congress over water projects he wanted to cut] underscored the weaknesses of the new president’s approach to his job: by compartmentalizing decisions he failed to make connections to other priorities, and this was compounded by... Continue reading