It was 1966 and my first scrape with the law. It did not go as disastrously as it could have, though the potential was certainly there for permanent physical mayhem and a significant black mark on my Permanent Record. In a way I benefitted from my callow age- just as the underage undocumented aliens are […]

I am jet-lagged and punchy this morning. It had been a pretty good flight back into DCA- Ronald Reagan National on the signs- and we made it in between thunderstorms spawned by the Polar Vortex that is making this an unseasonably pleasant summer. Given how surreal everything else is these days, I thought I might […]

People- well, American people, of a certain age- love their cars. I wrote the other day about the quirky little Nash Metropolitan the family had back in the fifties. I wish we could have kept all the good ones. A pal who lives Down Under wrote to comment that his “brother has kept his ’67 […]

Another Great American left us over the weekend. This departure is worth noting on it’s own merit, but the death of RADM John Marocchi links us back to our pal Mac Showers. John was the senior surviving retired Naval Intelligence Admiral, and his story was a unique one. For the small community that cares about […]

I am going to write about the beloved Nash Metropolitan this morning. It is, I think, a non-controversial topic on which to write. I was thinking about it in the course of marveling at the news that we are going to spend abut $67,000 a year on undocumented Dreamers, of whom we understand we will […]

(Senator Robert Byrd, D-WV, tunes his fiddle. Photo courtesy of Eem in Cambridge, MA). We have been down the rapids on a variety of issues together over the last fourteen years. We have wandered through history, taken adventures in urban and country living, traveled across oceans and marveled at the diversity of this amazing world. […]

(Argentinian players are scrumming or something in this action shot from ESPN). Old Jim summed it up pretty eloquently last night at the bar as the mind-numbing match between two incredibly talented defensive teams from the Argentine and Holland battled to an inconclusive nil-nil tie in extended time. Then they picked a couple guys and […]

So the Germans shocked the Boys from Brazil yesterday afternoon. It was nothing short of astonishing. I had turned the match on at Big Pink, finishing off a decent swim under clear but hazy skies. Kulik the lifeguard was bummed- he had no way to watch the match, and once I left there was no […]

Will Brazil go ugly early? Will they attempt to foul their way into the finals over the methodical Germans? Based on the ugly way they have advanced before their adulating fans, the answer is probably yet. Will I go out to watch the game? Stay in? Why on earth do I care? Is it that […]

It might have been the best weekend of the year- maybe one of the best 4th of July Weekends in a long time. The humidity was down, temperatures were mild, and I turned off the air conditioning at the farm and threw the windows open to the inviting sounds of the birds, occasional gunfire from […]