We were doing the reading this bright and sunny Monday morning to try to grapple with what is going on in this wild and exciting world. The Writing Section betrayed bewilderment at some it- you know, grunts and intermittent groaning. A whiff of tobacco smoke from those most recently returned from the Loading Dock area […]

The humidity is hovering on the upper end of the dew point we like best. There will be a couple months of swelter coming, the steamy languor of Virginia’s Piedmont summer. But that is a constant in these parts. The other part that is not usual is the scope and drama associated with the generational […]

History was big this week. Yesterday, they carefully dismantled the statues down in Charlottesville of General Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Those two were fairly big in Refuge Farm history, since General Lee started his campaign toward Gettysburg here, and just over at Cedar Mountain, Jackson got some of his reputation. The cast-metal statues […]

Do you still read the paper? I mean, do you trundle past the front door and actually open it to stoop and retrieve a bundle of newsprint to scan while pouring scalding coffee down your gullet? It used to be normal. It has been a journey. Decades ago, I was a New York Times subscriber, […]

I don’t know about your viewing habits, but as a retiree, I find ‘staying up late’ to be anything beyond eight o’clock in the evening. I try to catch Tucker Carlson when the evening medication has not dulled my senses overmuch, but can’t say I often make it beyond the introductory monologue. Last night was […]

Socotra House LLC wants to express regret for a delay in new Footnotes to explain that we have no animus to any of the screwy ideas now festooning our public life. The disturbance in the Intern Bunkhouse was unfortunate, law enforcement was not called, due to problems with potential selective enforcement, and we wish to […]