This is just about the de facto end of a wonderful summer. There was a marvelous swim yesterday in the lingering bright light of the pool complex at the west end of the building- the West Wing, some call it, and it was hard to accept that the lifeguards from the Czech Republic are off […]

The Production Meeting started with more than the usual half-somnolent uproar. It is Wednesday, the day we are supposed to start pulling together the weekly Weather Report. The coffee hadn’t kicked in yet, and as a group, we relied on our pre-existing biases to stay oriented. Where some of us lived, for a while, in […]

Good heavens, there is a lot to talk about! Some of us are just back from an amazing road trip under cloudless clear Carolina blue sky. Friendly people. It looked like the America we knew- people freindly, lawns well kept in front of neat little homes and fine dining. Not like the pile of stuff […]

We wish we could attribute the delay in publication to something constructive, like out-of-control day drinking or multiple balloting in elections with which we were not previously familiar. But there was travel involved, down to the charming state of North Carolina, and a moving interaction with beloved but distant family and friends under delightful weather […]

February 18,1951-August 10, 2024 Harold James Greenlee left this world for another on August 10th of this historic year. He left at peace, surrounded by those who loved him. The family joined yesterday under the rich blue North Carolina skies to lay him to eternal rest, surrounded by those who knew and loved him in […]

It is another historic morning in this already historic year! We have a family funeral awaiting travel to an adjacent state, and this is the last weekend of summer from a social rather than calendar standpoint. We hope for a swim or two when we return, but that is still to come. The waning Super […]

What a morning! Cool, crisp enough to feel alive, a sky so beckoning and bottomless blue that this last lunar phase of summer shone with a brilliance that made the first Marlboro of the morning- or the last monkey Shoulder of the night- a magical experience. Depends on perspective. All the stuff below? It is […]

A Long Prayer   The Speaker grabbed me as we were supposed to start our group meeting on negotiations. He is not the current Speaker of the Republic of the Philippines House of Representatives. He was, though. He is on a sabbatical from politics to attend Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of government three-week intensive […]

The Folks in the Legal Section at Socotra House have been cranky since the Debate. There is a lot to talk about in the Campaign, the endless one we have been chatting about with some volume for the duration of this Administration, it seems. The Company was warned by the government, along with all other […]

You can see the challenge of generational change in the outing this morning. When we still wore the dungarees or wrinkled khakis, we were intensely interested in one of the ships above when it arrived in Pacific waters with those funny jets. They were totally inadequate for a fight at sea, but it was situationally […]