Adapted from the Twitter feed, Wednesday evening, February 1, 2017. The thing to remember about my senator Kirstin Gillibrand is that she’s my senator Senator Kirstin Gillibrand of New York Here's my secret which isn't much of a secret: Back before HRC declared, when it was still a question whether she would run, I was hoping she wouldn't. But not for the conventional reasons. You know: She wasn't liberal enough. She was too compromised by her Wall Street ties. She would lose or find a way to lose. No coronations. No dynasties. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Nope. I... Continue reading

Posted Wednesday evening, February 1, 2017. I wish somebody would tell us what the Democrats are supposed to do about being outvoted in both houses of Congress? I know what they can't do. Win any vote that divides along party lines. That's the obvious one. But they also can't make us feel like Donald Trump isn't president and the GOP doesn't hold all the cards. And they can't make us feel good about that or make us feel less worried, less anxious, less depressed, less frustrated… And they can't make those of us who are inclined to do so to... Continue reading

Posted Tuesday night, January 31, 2017. High hopes amid high temperatures fuel a hunt for ancient rock art in Namibia https://t.co/bIvdl3rbjQ — NatGeoTravel (@NatGeoTravel) January 30, 2017 Brandberg means “fire mountain” in German and the local Afrikaans, a literal translation of the tribal Damara name, Dâures. The appellation wasn’t inspired by the scorching temperatures but by the glowing scarlet color of the massif first at sunrise, then at sunset. Geologically, the almost perfectly circular formation some 20 miles in diameter is one of the most unusual mountains on Earth, a product of the splitting of the ancient continent of Gondwana... Continue reading

Posted Tuesday morning, January 31, 2017. Sometimes I think Matthew 25:31-46 is about all the Scripture anyone needs to know. President Trump's refugee and migrant policies are manifestly unchristian and utterly contrary to the Gospels: https://t.co/E8qSPlvR1i — James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 28, 2017 “President Trump has announced that he will order the construction of a Mexican border wall, the first in a series of actions to crack down on immigrants, which will include slashing the number of refugees who can resettle in the United States, and blocking Syrians and others from what are called ‘terror-prone nations’ from entering, at... Continue reading

Updated below. Adapted from the Twitter feed, Monday morning, January 30, 2017. Until he threatens their partisan agenda, Congressional Republicans will be fine with our mad, idiot king Photo courtesy of CNN. Cute picture. Our Mr President Trump looks mighty pleased with himself, doesn’t he? Like a grade schooler who’s gotten a gold star on his homework? This photo is a big reason for the ban. The executive order itself is a prop. All these EOs are as much for show as for effect. Are they Constitutional? Will they do the job Our Mr President claims they'll do? Almost beside... Continue reading

Posted Saturday night, January 28, 2017. Saw Hidden Figures tonight. (Thanks to the generous readers who bought our tickets and popcorn.) I think it was a very good movie. I think it was. I’m not sure it was because I feel like it was a great one. It really hit me where I live. But it wasn’t just the subject. There was the nostalgia factor, of course. But the nostalgia was personal as well as generational. These photos might explain. Here’s Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician and physicist who’s the main character of the film, with... Continue reading

Posted Friday morning, January 27, 2017. Originally posted Friday, April 21, 2006. Slightly revised. The Romantic Misadventures of the Petries of New Rochelle Jealous of himself: Rob Petrie, clueless as usual, has the wrong idea about what’s put Laura in such a romantic mood, in the episode “The Two Faces of Rob” from Season 2 of The Dick Van Dyke Show. The lyrically-minded Kevin Wolf, who has a touch of the poet, even if he doesn't believe it about himself, admits to having had the same reaction to reading about my dream about Rob and Laura Petrie as I had... Continue reading

Posted Friday morning, January 27, 2017. Originally posted Sunday, July 10, 2011. Somewhat revised. Not Laura Petrie. A blogger’s life is like the king’s, according to Alice, terrible hard. In order to write my review of Dick Van Dyke’s memoirs I had to do some intensive research that required me to watch eight or nine episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. You’re feeling bad for me already, I know it and I appreciate your concern. All the episodes are available to watch online and I put links to a few of the ones I watched in the review. More... Continue reading

Adapted from the Twitter feed. Thursday morning, January 26, 2017. He’s so erratic and undisciplined it’s sometimes difficult to see the method in his madness. But it’s really quite simple. Most of what Our Mr President Trump is up to isn't draining the swamp. It's feeding the gators---the object is to make rich people richer. But a lot if it is destruction for destruction's sake because a). Our Mr President Trump’s is a destructive personality; it’s his nature to wreck things, and b). destruction is what his base wants. That turned up in every story about Trump voters. They wanted... Continue reading

Posted Wednesday evening, January 25, 2017. One of the things that helped me enjoy Mad Men was imagining that down the river from the Drapers’ home in Ossining, scenes like this were taking place at Bonnie Meadow Road in New Rochelle… Goodbye, Laura. Goodbye, Mary. Continue reading

Updated below, Tuesday afternoon, January 24, 2017. Adapted from the Twitter feed December 10, 2016. Posted January 23, 2017. Math ain’t natural. But it is beautiful. Taraji P. Henson as NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson doing some of the math that would send the Mercury astronauts into space and bring them home again in the movie about the team of African American women computers who helped get the United States space program underway, Hidden Figures. Personal prejudice: Most people can’t do math. What we call math is actually simple arithmetic. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Calculating. What Jethro Bodine in his... Continue reading

Posted Saturday evening, January 21, 2017. Leonard DiCaprio as mercenary Danny Archer and Djimon Hounsou as Solomon Vandy, a fisherman from Sierra Leone searching for his son who’s been kidnapped by soldiers from a rebel army, in Blood Diamond. Editor’s note: We watched Blood Diamond for Family Movie Night last night. I hadn’t seen it again in the ten years since it came out. I liked it a lot and I remembered having liked it just as much back then, but I dug out my review from 2007 to see if I agreed with me---that is, I wondered if 2007... Continue reading

Posted Saturday, January 21, 2017. Hillary’s too good a Christian to have been trolling the baby Christian, our new Mr President Donald Trump by tweeting this quote from the letter of Paul to the Galatians back in November: Scripture tells us: Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we shall reap, if we do not lose heart. She’d alluded to that passage in her concession speech and I don’t think she was trolling Trump there either. She was trying to cheer up her voters and encourage them and all Americans of good conscience and heart... Continue reading

Posted Friday morning, January 20, 2017. As Julie M. Fenster writes in The Case of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln “Lincoln encouraged a low opinion of his looks” and took “apparent delight in telling stories that brought attention to them.” Here’s one of his stories, as paraphrased in a newspaper article from the day: Tis said that in his younger days, [Lincoln] made a vow that if ever should find a man uglier than himself, he would shoot him. One day while rambling over the hills with his rifle in his hands, in search of game, he met a man who was... Continue reading

Posted Friday morning, January 20, 2017. What I was saying about Lincoln making political hay out of his less than handsome features? Lincoln was a man without vanity regarding his appearance---but he was not a man without vanity. He encouraged a low opinion of his looks, taking apparent delight in telling stories that brought attention to them. Brash strangers were emboldened to call him “ugly”; polite ones said “homely.” Lincoln wasn’t anything like the ogre he made himself out to be, but it was a stance with practical benefits, as a way to warm any room to his side. Therein... Continue reading

Posted Thursday evening, January 19, 2017. Donald Trump is a terrible actor and a ham, but he sure knows how to play “himself” on TV. “Quick, Jared! How do you spell unpresidetented again?” Yep. That’s exactly the expression Abraham Lincoln wore when he was writing his Second Inaugural Address. Except Lincoln was probably looking at the paper he was writing on. And he was actually writing. But, still, doesn’t that frown say “This is a President!”? Geez Louise. I know politicians have to be actors. Lincoln acted all the time. He staged his own portraits. That stove-pipe hat was ridiculous... Continue reading

Posted Wednesday morning, January 19, 2017. Kilgore Trout finishes explaining why Eliot Rosewater isn’t nuts even though he probably is: “Americans have long been taught to hate all people who will not or cannot work, to hate even themselves for that. We can thank the vanished frontier for that piece of common-sense cruelty. The time is coming, if it isn’t here now, when it will no longer be common sense. It will simply be cruel.” ---from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut. Continue reading

Posted Wednesday morning, January 19, 2017. Kilgore Trout continues to explain why Eliot Rosewater isn’t nuts even though he probably is: “In time, almost all men and women will become worthless as producers of goods, food, services, and more machines, as sources of practical ideas in the areas of economics, engineering, and probably medicine, too. So---if we can’t find reasons for treasuring human beings because they are human beings, then we might as well, as so often been suggested, rub them out.” ---from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut. Continue reading

Posted Thursday morning, January 19, 2017. Kilgore Trout explains why Elliot Rosewater isn’t nuts even though he probably is: “Well---” and Trout rubbed his hands, watched the rubbing, “what you did in Rosewater county was far from insane. It was quite possibly the most important social experiment of our time, for it dealt on a very small scale with a problem whose queasy horrors will eventually be made world-wide by the sophistication of machines. The problem is this: How to love people who have no use.” ---from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut. Continue reading

Posted Tuesday morning, January 17, 2017. Why does Trash Day fill me with sadness and dread? “Road Block” by Norman Rockwell. Courtesy of the Saturday Evening Post. 7:40 a.m. Trash day. Still dark. Neighborhood full of noise though. Trucks rumbling up and down the streets. Two companies, two trucks each, one for the recyclables, one for the trash, two bins at each house. Brakes wheeze, hydraulically, sneeze, cough. Motors growl as the robot arms reach out, grab, lift, dump, and set back down the bins. Bins go down with a clatter and and a hollow slap as their wheels hit... Continue reading

Posted Sunday, January 15, 2017. Photo of the Day: Staring Contesthttps://t.co/3wR9iRbtzG #photography #pod — National Geographic (@NatGeo) January 14, 2017 “A crowd viewing Rembrandt’s famous "The Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild" painting at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum creates the illusion of art staring back at its audience. The museum focuses on Dutch art, featuring works dating from the Middle Ages onward. Your Shot photographer Julius Y. writes that ‘they are looking at each other between past and future.’" Follow the link to see a larger image of Julius Y’s photograph at National Geographic. Continue reading

Posted Saturday morning, January 14, 2017. Could a cure for cancer be hiding in the elephant’s genetic code? The massive mammals have a much lower incidence of cancer than one would expect, given their size and long life span. It’s a phenomenon popularized by Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto, called Peto’s paradox, that larger animals have lower incidences of cancer, despite having exponentially more cells with the potential to mutate. Now, researchers believe they know why, and it could reap dividends for humans. To read Janine Anderson’s article, follow the link to Elephants Rarely Get Cancer, Now We Know Why... Continue reading

Posted Thursday morning, January 5, 2017. For Cara Giaimo’s article and a video tour of the village, follow the link to “Quebec's Hottest New Real Estate Listing” at Atlas Obscura. Continue reading