Lance Mannion

Weather Report. November 12, 2018: Sapphire Sky

Mined from the notebooks, Monday, November 12, 2018. Posted Saturday, December 1.

Monday. 5:00 p.m. 51 degrees. Long session of therapies this afternoon. Not quite dark when we walk out to the car. Sky sapphire blue.

Weather Report. November 5, 2018: Prism-shaped columns of mist

Mined from the notebooks, Monday, November 5, 2018. Posted Saturday, December 1.

Monday. 3:30 p.m. 46 degrees. On the Thruway heading south, just below Kingston, on our way home after Mrs M’s therapies. Across the valley to the east, many prism-shaped columns of mist rising high out of the hollows, thick and white as smoke.

Weather Report. October 13, 2018: With a goose as my confessor

Saturday. 4 a.m. 46 degrees. Rain predicted. Wide awake, waiting for the coffee to brew, reviewing my sins. A goose headed for the river flies over the house, honking lonesomely.

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Filed under How the Weather Was.

Weather Report. September 25, 2018: Somewhere safe and comforting

 

Monday. 7:40 a.m. 51 degrees. Sun up just high enough to turn the sky blue to the horizon but the light is still soft and shadows long. Light wind from the north. 5 mph. Can see it in the tops of the neighbor’s maples. Out on the porch, of course, called out here by my friends the blue jays. Mrs M, bundled up in my barn coat, has joined me for coffee and coffee cake. I told her about how I think of the blue jays as my friends. That’s them whistling, I pointed out. Blue jays don’t just cluck and cackle and scream. They’re truly sociable birds. They’re talking to each other. Not flirting. Not marking territory. Just saying hello and exchanging news. I know Ms M loves me because she puts up so patiently with my bird lore lectures.

When she woke up I suggested we run away. I was already feeling oppressed by the length of my to-do list.

“Where to?” she asked.

“No place special,” I said. “Someplace safe and comforting.”

“Ok,” she said agreeably.

So here we are.

Weather Report. September 22, 2018: Wind picking up again with a hiss

Saturday. 7:07 a.m. 64 degrees. Wind from the northwest at 7 mph. Out on the porch. Barefoot and in my pajamas but with my barn coat over them. A few geese honking overhead. Clouds on the move, heading east, low, white cotton puff balls but with rags and tatters of dark silver, the color I used to use for unconvincing chrome on model cars and airplanes. The breeze bouncing the tree branches just before I came out here had stopped for a while but is picking up again with a hiss. A robin, startled out of the holly bushes, flies at an angle into the window, glances off the glass, and flies off, apparently unharmed.

Weather Report. September 11, 2018: Where did the summer go?

Tuesday. 12;07 p.m. 67 degrees. On Route 9, heading south, taking Mrs M to her appointment with her surgeon in Westchester. Low hanging mist chopping the tops off the wooded hills to the west. Last time I made this trip was June 5. Three months and six days. Seems like no more than a week ago. Then there were still flowers on the locusts and ash trees. Today there’s yellow in the birches and poplars, rust in the maples.

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Photo "Autumn birch" by James Jordan, courtesy of Mecklenburgh Square Garden.

Weather Report. September 5, 2018: Mourning Dove, Mourning Lance

Wednesday. 6:22 a.m. 66 degrees. Out on the porch. Sun up but sky clouded over. Pale gray. Thing patch of fog in the air I can see only against the background of the far, large maple just beyond our neighbor’s fence at the corner of her driveway across the street. The dawn chorus right now is a frenzy of crickets or peepers---can never tell---humming and chirping allegro. Only bird singing yet is a mourning dove somewhere behind our house cooing sorrowfully in counterpoint, the heartbroken call of woe that gives mourning doves their name. And I’m thinking, “You and me both, pal. You and me both.”

Weather Report. August 26: April makes a return appearance

Mined from the notebooks. Posted Tuesday morning, September 4.

Wednesday. 7:48 a.m. 61 degrees. It's a little chilly out here on the porch where I'm sitting having my coffee. This sounds like banal news but let's unpack it.

1. It's a chilly morning. 61 degrees. No humidity. Sunny. Cloudless sky.

2. I'm outside but not doing yard work! I'm having my coffee out on the porch. 

These two conditions have not occurred simultaneously since APRIL!

Weather Report. June 30, 2018: Sanity and priority prevail

Saturday. 10:43 a.m. 81 degrees. Sky bright blue, air still clear and fresh. Deep green shadows on the front and back lawns and the face of the house. A good morning to putter about outside. Hot as it already is---81 and the heat's rising---I want to stay here and help the Mannion men with the yard work. But sanity and priority prevail and I'm off to the hospital where I'm needed for other things beside mowing the lawn. Good thing too. The lawn there is huge!

Weather Report. June 13, 2018: Robin’s Evensong

Wednesday. 8:35 p.m. 76 degrees. On my to the car.  Pretty night. Muggy though. Sun almost down. Sky still light but pale, drained of color. Trees and buildings to the west in silhouette. Robins heading home to the roost. Last song birds to bed. No singing as they fly to their nests and perches for the night. Irritable chittering and clucking. Out of my way! I’m coming! Hold your horses! One dipping low over the parking lot, circling and then swooping up into the young tree he’s chosen for his choir loft for his evensong.

Weather Report. June 11 2018: I swear they think they own the place

Monday. 10:05 a.m. 69 degrees. Beautiful spring day. Leaving for the hospital. Catbird perched on the mailbox, giving me the eye as I walk out to the car and put my books and computer bag in the backseat, looking like he’s trying not to look like he’s not impatient for me to get out of here so he can take over the holly bushes. I’m telling you. They think they own the place and we’re their tenants.

Weather Report. May 22, 2018: Patio living

Wednesday. 3:45 p.m.. 79 degrees. No humidity. Wind 8 mph, from the NW. Just enough breeze to luft the flags. Beautiful afternoon to sit out on the patio in the shade and have an ice tea and read a book, even if the patio is a hospital's and the ice tea was bought at the hospital's overpriced cafeteria.

Weather Report. May 7, 2018: Fog up the river and down

Monday. 6:02 a.m. 50 degrees. Crossing the Hudson at Beacon, on the way to the hospital. Fog. Fog to the north. Fog to the south. Fog ahead to the east. No river on my left. No river on my right. No bridge to see ahead. Just fog.

Weather Report. April 2, 2012: No writing today

Monday. 8:15 a.m. 29 degrees. Snow coming straight down, steady, heavy, and wet. Prediction is it’ll end at 11 with less than an inch on the ground. Up since 6:30. Sitting in the living room watching it fall. On my fourth cup of coffee. No writing today.

Weather Report. March 30, 2018: Reveille for robins

Friday. 5 a.m. on the dot. A lone robin somewhere out fronts starts fussing as if startled awake and not at all happy about it. No daylight yet. It’s raining lightly but I can’t see it. I hear it. Soft but annoying drumming on the back deck.  Now other robins in the distance have started cheeping all at once. Maybe the first robin is their bugler.

Weather report: March 12, 2018. New Jersey is 50 miles away, as the cardinal flies

Monday morning. 7:35 a.m. Wind 4 mph. There’s a cardinal somewhere nearby who really wants other cardinals to know he’s there. I mean he really wants them to know. Cardinals in New Jersey are getting the message.

22 degrees. Clear skies that will probably be blue when the sun’s higher. Snow’s predicted for tonight.

Weather Report. March 2, 2018: Nor’easter’s end

Friday evening. 5:45 p.m. 35 degrees. Our winter nor'easter has turned into a cold spring rain. Wind's reportedly blowing at 23 mph but it seems to have died. A single sparrow chirping in the bushes. Night coming on. The branches of our neighbor’s big maple growing blacker against the silhouette of her roof and the darkening sky.

5:55. Wind’s picking up again. The maple’s branches bouncing ominously in the breeze look more like long, ghostly arms rotating at the shoulders. But our neighbor’s lighted windows are warmly brightening the gloom, and Oliver’s just back from a walk with the news that the rain has stopped.

Weather report. February 17, 2018: No robins here yet.

Saturday. 7:39 a.m. 23 degrees. Another notification of a weather memory from Facebook has just come in. Four years ago today:

Right now, this instant, there is a Robin sitting in the holly bush out front and looking in the window. Forget the foot of snow on the ground, never mind all the snow he shook off the branches when he landed. It's spring.

No robins here yet. Blue jays are being noisy. Beautiful morning. Looks like it's going to be sunny but snow is supposed to be on the way. Still winter.

Weather Report. February 10, 2018: Memories of the last ice age

Saturday. 5:30 p.m. Dominican Hall. Mount Saint Mary. Waiting for Oliver to get done with work. 40 degrees. Foggy. Raining. Facebook “On This Day” notification reminds me that in a status update 7 years ago today I reported that the weather was a little different:

It is never going to be warm again. Never! Mastodons are roaming the neighborhood. Houses are being pushed from their foundations by the advancing glacier. We're all out of rock salt!

Toby Veck, banged and buffeted, and touzled, and worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet by the wind

Posted Monday night, January 1, 2017.

One of Dickens’ great talents was that no matter how bad the weather really was, he could make it feel so much worse. He could also make it funny. Here’s poor Toby Veck, whose job as a ticket-porter keeps him outside all day in all weather, dealing with a winter wind:

And a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony-toed, tooth-chattering place it was, to wait in, in the winter-time, as Toby Veck well knew.  The wind came tearing round the corner—especially the east wind—as if it had sallied forth, express, from the confines of the earth, to have a blow at Toby.  And oftentimes it seemed to come upon him sooner than it had expected, for bouncing round the corner, and passing Toby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried ‘Why, here he is!’  Incontinently his little white apron would be caught up over his head like a naughty boy’s garments, and his feeble little cane would be seen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his legs would undergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and touzled, and worried, and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but one degree removed from a positive miracle, that he wasn’t carried up bodily into the air as a colony of frogs or snails or other very portable creatures sometimes are, and rained down again, to the great astonishment of the natives, on some strange corner of the world where ticket-porters are unknown.

---from The Chimes by Charles Dickens.

By the way, The Chimes is usually collected with Dickens' Christmas stories, but it's a New Year's story. (With goblins.) So from Charles Dickens, Toby Veck, the goblins, and all of us here in Mannionville---:Mrs M, Ken, Oliver, and myself---Happy New Year!