(At some point, we found a box of Aunt Rhoda’s dress hats. Just the finishing touch for the well-dressed estate cleaner-outer. Photo Socotra.)   Well, it was a circus. Spike called to let me know that his airplane suffered a bird-strike on final into Alpena, and there was some controversy over whether the machine was […]

  (The Infiniti FX35 at rest in the Little Village by the Bay. Could it be the best cross-country ride ever? Photo Socotra.)   OK- a performance car review it is not what I intended this morning, but I have flogged a variety of cars across this eight hundred mile route, and I am impressed. […]

“In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.“ ~Mark Twain I thought I got a memo about the end of winter. Big Pink’s Porter staff swept through the unit last week. They were checking the convectors in preparation for the cut-over from warm […]

(CAPT Ahab’s good ship Pequod. Painting by J Dillon). I have a lot of scrambling to do today to get on the road to the Little Village By the Bay. There is that book I am supposed to be editing, and now that the Annual Meeting of the Professionals is over, I am on the […]

(Mac holds the newspaper with his story in The Community Section. Photo Socotra.) I am sitting here at the breakfast table in Big Pink, looking out over the pool and the Culpeper Gardens Assisted Living Facility. The eight-story building with the exposed concrete beams serves as a red brick metaphor to my mornings as the […]

(The Band, Levon Helm second from left.) The voices of pop music of the 1950s, sixties and seventies were stilled yesterday. The one that came as the larger shock- not the eternal teenager Dick Clark- but the one that signified our voice, the one of inchoate rage and calls for revolution. Which is sort of […]

(Publicity photo of American Bandstand host Dick Clark. Public Domain.) I wondered at the link between the three completely unique people who left this world early in this year. They all struck it rich in the America that roared out of World War Two. Big Mama was one of them, the first to go, though […]

(Shuttle Discovery flies down the National Mall 17 April 2012 in a last pass of glory. Photo CBS News.) My knee feels better today but my back is killing me. One step forward and half a step back, I guess. But life is good. I was thinking that, among other things, when the Shuttle Discovery […]

My eyes blinked open early this morning, but it was late for being early. I had slept straight through from nine or so to only an hour short of the alarm. I had pushed it a little- I am trying to walk with the stupid brace and the stupid cane, experimenting with geezerhood on the […]

(The Titanic Memorial on the placid banks of the Potomac, Washington’s gateway to the world ocean. The statue, carved from a single block of granite, depicts a partially clothed First Class male passenger. Photo Wikipedia.) Sorry campers, this is late. AOL, that creaky excuse for an e-mail system, got me this morning. No pictures meant […]