(Noted Islamist Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in a screen capture from ya Libnan.) This is about as bad as it gets. A pal with a nose for how things are going- he was a senior intelligence officer in the Emirates a while back and understands the regional alignment- is conceding what we knew as Iraq […]

I could not sleep in Arlington, a dramatic counterpoint to oversleeping yesterday at the farm. I came back up around mid-day to get a decent swim and huddle with some former co-workers about the future at Willow. Old Jim was there, enjoying a tuna slider with hot sauce and the welcome warmth of the day. […]

Ah, summer is bearing down upon us- and it will be welcome. They say it will be a week in the 90s- enough to make the coolness still resident in the pool bearable. An hour in the water left me shivering on Saturday, and a quicker swim on Sunday still left me with depressed core […]

This is sort of crazy. It is Father’s Day, of course, and I looked around for the cell phone and realized we interred Raven’s ashes almost two years ago. Still, there is that inclination to grab the phone and do something, check off that box in the phantom “to do” list. Oh well. So, with […]

I have achieved a new summit: I have written not one but three stories I can’t do anything with this morning. I will have to put them aside. At this rate, I will still be at the keyboard late this afternoon and miss crucial pool time. Anyway, the traumatic news of yesterday morning didn’t sit […]

I can’t quite grapple with this morning. I am disturbed enough about the events in Iraq that I am having flashbacks to the Ford Administration’s sad end, and then the disaster that was Jimmy Carter. Some of this current nonsense is directly attributable to a painfully incorrect view of what was happening in Iran, and […]

(Image grab taken from a propaganda video uploaded on June 8, 2014, by the jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)- or Syria, (ISIS) depending on which part of the new Caliphate you prefer. Photo AFP/Getty Images) Being a voting member of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District is a liberating feeling. It […]

(Eric Cantor concedes in Richmond. Photo Steve Helber/Associated Press). I did not vote yesterday. I used to live in the wrong congressional district, and my registration is still in Arlington, though the primary residence is down toward Richmond at the Farm. The Democratic primary was yesterday, and I was concentrating on other matters. I thought […]

(The first two pages of Big Mama’s Baby Book. She kept meticulous records. I still have boxes of check stubs from 1949 down in the garage at the farm. Photo Socotra). It is a birthday today- mine, as it happens, along with a few million other residents of the globe. I would be the one […]

(Botta’s Pocket Gopher (Thomomys bottae). I did not get this close- not yet, anyway. Photo Wikipedia) The new tenants moved in without benefit of lease. Sort of like Mrs. Mouse in the Mailbox last year, dammit. I am not happy with the trespassers, and I am not going to get into who is trespassing on […]