Posted Tuesday night, October 27, 2020. The lobby of the Dan Grable Museum at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Waterloo, Iowa. The mural in the foreground depicts young Abraham Lincoln's wrestling match with local champion Jack Armstrong in 1831. "I have done more for the black community than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Nobody can dispute it. Nobody can dispute it. Nobody can dispute it." Trump speaking from the White House balcony like the wannabe dictator he is at his illegal campaign rally at the White House, Saturday, October 10, 2020. Just going by how often he mentions... Continue reading

Posted Tuesday morning, October 27, 2020. “Jay Gould’s Private Bowling Alley”: Cartoon by Frederick Burr Opper in Puck, March 27, 1882. “Financier and stock speculator Jay Gould is depicted on Wall Street, using bowling balls titled "trickery," "false reports," "private press" and "general unscrupulousness" to knock down bowling pins labeled as "operator," "broker," "banker," "inexperienced investor," etc. A slate shows Gould's controlling holdings in various corporations, including Western Union, Missouri Pacific Railroad, and the Wabash Railroad.” Via Wikipedia. Henry Adams deplored the escape of [Jay] Gould and [Jim] Fisk from retribution. He expressed hopefulness that “Messrs. Gould and Fisk will... Continue reading

Sunday night, October 25, 2020. "Caxton Showing the First Specimen of His Printing to King Edward IV at the Almonry, Westminster: With Edward are his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, and their children, Elizabeth, Edward, and Richard" by Daniel McLise, 1851. Via Wikipedia. Robinson doesn’t get into it here, but the irony is implicit: the inheritors of the Protestant Reformation in the United States are the liberal descendants of New Englanders who populated the blue states and the blue islands along the Mississippi and the coasts of the West and the South, while the brand of Protestantism running wild across the political... Continue reading

First listen Friday morning, August 16, 2019. Replayed Saturday morning, October 24, 2020. Screen capture from music video for "Take On Me" by A-ha, via YouTube and the Irish Times. Another note from the Department of In Search of Lost Time, from back when you could go into a restaurant without thinking about it. Friday morning, August 16, 2019: Perkins for breakfast. Song comes on the P.A. A hit from the ‘80s. I knew the lyrics by heart but for the life of me I can’t name the band. or the song's title, although that should have been a no-brainer.... Continue reading

Posted Friday morning, October 23, 2020. Detail from “The Junction of the Thames and the Medway” by J.M.W. Turner. 1807. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 6:35 a.m. Mrs M and I both up before the birds. Tea and cinnamon toast. Mrs M reading the New Yorker. Me, I'm reading Wordsworth. We're a living New Yorker cartoon waiting for a caption. So I captioned us... Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go? Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day, Festively she puts forth in trim array; Is she for tropic suns, or polar snow? What... Continue reading

Posted Wednesday, October 21, 2020. Portrait of Langston Hughes by Carl Van Vechten. © Van Vechten Trust. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Via Poetry Foundation. Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven. ---"Luck" by Langston Hughes, via the Poetry Society of America. There’s a scene in “Marshall” that at first almost jarred me right out of the movie. It takes place in a Harlem nightclub and a character, played by Jussie Smollett, makes, for me, an unexpected and implausible entrance.... Continue reading

Originally keyboarded, not typed, sad to report, August 8, 2013. Keyboarded again and posted Tuesday morning, October 20, 2020. Tom Hanks showing off his collection of typewriters in a scene from the 2016 documentary “California Typewriter”. Was doing a search of recent twitter posts, trying to find something I’d written in August about Tom Hanks’ movie “Greyhound” and I found instead something I’d written about Hanks in August of 2013! It led me to an old blog post in which I attempted to answer the question “If we ever met, would Tom Hanks and I have become friends?” The answer... Continue reading

Posted Monday afternoon, October 19. 2020. For all your Second Amendment solution needs. Wallkill River Small Arms, this morning, around eight. Continue reading

Posted Sunday morning, October 18, 2020. Sundance stalks down the tracks from the engine of the train he’s just stopped at gunpoint. The fireman jumps from the cab to follow him. He’s excited that his train is being robbed by the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. Sundance gives him a look. “Just want to watch,” the fireman says. “Bring the kids, why don’t you?” the Kid says. They continue down to the mail car where Butch and the rest of the gang are gathered. Butch is arguing with someone on the other side of the locked and barred car door. Sundance: “What’s going... Continue reading

Updated Wednesday morning, October 21, 2020. Originally posted Saturday morning, October 17, 2020. Thurgood Marshall, second row, second from right, with fellow Alpha Phi Alpha pledges at Lincoln University, 1926. Photo courtesy of the Langston Hughes Memorial Library Special Collections and Archives, the Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, via Daily Local News. Growing up in Baltimore in the 1910s and 20s, Thurgood Marshall was known more for his boisterous personality than for his smarts, of which of course he had plenty. He was a practical joker, a loudmouth, a showoff, by his own account a roughneck, and a rover, at least... Continue reading

Posted Saturday morning, October 17, 2020. “Never a dull or lazy moment”: Chadwick Boseman as the 32 year old Thurgood Marshall in 1940, long before he became a justice on the Supreme Court, when he was a lawyer for the NAACP, looking as if he’s almost enjoying the harassment of a crowd of white racists outside the courthouse where he’s defending a black man on trial for raping a white woman in a scene from the 2017 movie “Marshall”. I love it that Thurgood Marshall’s secretary Alice Stovall called the Westerns her boss enjoyed “they-went-that-a-way movies”. I wish she’d been... Continue reading

Posted Friday morning, October 16, 2020. “Come and take them!” Gun rights advocates including members of militia and extremist groups carry signs and flags near the Virginia Capitol in Richmond to protest Virginia’s new gun control regulations, January 20, 2020. Photo by Julia Rendleman for the Washington Post. The novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson wrote this before you know who descended that gold elevator. The arms-bearing folk have been irked for a long time: It seems these days as if the right to bear arms is considered by some a suitable remedy for the tendency of others to act on... Continue reading

Posted Thursday morning, October 15, 2020. Colorized detail from “Barbara Fritchie waving tattered U.S. flag from window, Frederick, MD, 1862”, an illustration by N.C. Wyeth, 1922. In the Library of Congress’ collection, via Discover Poetry. My reason for posting this can be found on my Facebook page. (Fans and friends of Mrs M will get a kick out of it.) But it’s also to remind Republicans that not only don’t they own the flag but their voters include a sizable cohort who proudly wave a different country’s flag every chance they get and count Stonewall Jackson as one of their... Continue reading

Posted Tuesday morning, October 13, 2020. 2020 Nobel laureate Louise Gluck speaking at the Academy of Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. in 2012. Photo courtesy of the Academy. Via VTDigger. American poet Louise Gluck has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. It came to us very late: perception of beauty, desire for knowledge. And in the great minds, the two often configured as one. To perceive, to speak, even on subjects inherently cruel--- to speak boldly, even when the facts were, in themselves, painful or dire--- seemed to introduce among us some new action, having to do with... Continue reading

Posted Sunday evening, October 11, 2020. Hercule Poirot (David Suchet) sees to the proper operation of his digestive apparatus in a scene from the TV series adaptation of Agatha Christie's mystery novel "Death in the Clouds". Those times when Hercule Poirot becomes a “mere member of the human race," as explained by Hercule Poirot... “They say an army marches on its stomach,” said Poirot. “But how much are the delicate convolutions of the brain influenced by the digestive apparatus? When the mal de mer seizes me, I, Hercule Poirot, am a creature with no gray cells, no order, no method---a... Continue reading

Adapted from the Twitter feed, Monday, October 5, 2020. Posted Sunday morning, October 11. "Man does not live by bread alone." Detail from “Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness” by James Tissot. 1886, 1894. Brooklyn Museum, via Wikipedia. Is the pastor blaspheming? President @realDonaldTrump is the only person on earth that can turn a hospital stay into a rally. He’s also the only person on earth that would have the idea to take that drive around the hospital.---Pastor Darrell Scott on Twitter, this past Monday, October 5, 2020. Scott isn’t any ordinary Right Wing backwoods bible-thumper with a small congregation of... Continue reading

Lifted from the album, September 28, 2020. Posted October 9. Lowes, Newburgh, New York. Monday, September 28, 2020. Doesn't this stuff usually appear the day after Halloween? I know time is out of joint, but are we skipping October? What about the Trick-or-Treaters? What about my leftover Reeses? Continue reading

Posted Thursday morning, October 8, 2020. Front lawn of the Mannion ranch, this morning, around nine, Wednesday, October 8, 2020. Antonio Delgado is our Congressman, Jen Metzger our state senator. Joe and Kamala you know. The flag in the background is ours. I mean it belongs to all of us not just them. You know the them I mean; those angry folks who think they own it. Continue reading

Lifted from the album, Wednesday afternoon, September 30, 2020. Posted Monday night, October 5. I'd never thought that I would see a fungus as lovely as the tree it’s helping to return to the soil: Bracket Fungi on a dead maple by the road along the Wallkill River to the transfer station. Wednesday afternoon around one, September 30, 2020. Fungi are not my area of expertise---as if when it comes to observing nature I have any expertise; I’m a rank amateur and hobbyist---or interest. I tend to look past mushrooms and their fungous ilk at the trees and birds in... Continue reading

Adapted from the Twitter feed, August 5, 2019. Posted Saturday morning, August 29, 2020. Reposted Sunday night, October 4, 2020. St Louis Cardinal Hall of Famer Bob Gibson pitching to Detroit Tiger Hall of Famer Al Kaline in the 1968 World Series and not giving up a home run. In the three World Series he pitched in---1964, 1967, and 1968---Gibson gave up 4 home runs: 4 in ‘64, and 1 each in ‘67 and ‘68. First Tom Seaver, now Bob Gibson. Two of the best pitchers of all-time. Two of my favorite ball players of my time. I wrote two... Continue reading

Mined from the notebooks, Wednesday, September 30, 2020. Posted Friday morning, October 2. Then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh, September 4, 2018. Photo by Andew Harrer/Bloomberg, via the San Francisco Chronicle. This is the beginning of the story of how then Deputy Assistant Attorney Rod Rosenstein came to get Robert Mueller appointed special counsel investigating the Trump White House’s Russia connection. as told by Bob Woodward in his new book "Rage"... A Harvard graduate, Rosenstein had been a law-and-order, by-the-book career federal prosecutor for nearly 30 years. He considered... Continue reading

Posted Wednesday night, September 30, 2020. Nothing left to say to each other: Donald Trump and then-Secretary of Defense Marine General Jim Mattis at a White House Cabinet meeting, June 21, 2018. Reuters photo by Yuri Gripas, via the Washington Post. Yep, I'm reading it. Note the tucked-away reference in the passage below to Trump’s “formative years.” An awful lot of his perception of how the world works now is based on his perception of how it worked when he was a young con artist on the make. Remember: the key word in “Make America Great Again” is again. Also,... Continue reading

Lifted from the album September 30, 2019. Posted Wednesday afternoon, September 30, 2020. Well, I should hope so! As our friend Chris the Cop says, some days you’re just too busy: Newsstand at the Eveready Diner, Hyde Park, New York. September 30, 2019. Continue reading

Mined from the notebooks, June 14, 2020. Posted Tuesday morning, September 29, 2020. Then presidential candidate Donald Trump (top row center, his face lit as if by divine light) “praying” at a service at the International Church of Las Vegas, October 30, 2016. AP photo by Evan Vucci, via WBUR Boston. Amy Coney Barrett’s conveniently applied Catholicism, in which the only teaching of the Church that truly matters is the one against abortion, shouldn’t figure as the primary reason for opposing her. If anything, it’s of tertiary importance. The first is that she is a political conservative who would be... Continue reading