No word from the Village, or from our network of agents up there in Michigan, though I did get a note from my sister at midnight, Alaska-time, so the day may have passed without execution of the Secret Plan. I don’t know. I do know that the last week- can it only have been that […]

(Richard Milhouse Nixon in a contemplative moment. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images)   My sister Anook arranged a baby-sitter for Raven today so Mom can get out of the Village for the fall kick-off meeting of the Coterie, her social group.   Mom has been active in a variety of groups in the little city by the […]

  I was 548 miles from my most immediate set of problems, and the tension oozed out of me with each one. There is a peace and tranquility that comes with V8 power, though as the sun lowered in west behind me and the ground rose in western Pennsylvania the technical skill required to flog […]

(The view from the North Side of the Bay. Photo Socotra)   After lunch I drove over to the other side of the Bay. Just at the top of the hill that slopes down to the village is Bay Bluffs. My friend was right. An extensive modernization had been recently completed. The lobby area was […]

(Michigan Labor Day sunshine…finally. Photo Socotra)   It was a day of labor on the eponymously-named end-of-season weekend. A sense of dread followed me throughout. I did not have a show-down, exactly, with Mom. She sat next to the sofa where Raven was prostrate at eleven in the morning.   “I have to go back […]

(Potemkin Village under gray skies. Photo Socotra) It was a day that split me down to my gut. Started with a hearty breakfast of lies and a road trip to hell.   Mom expect me at ten, I had told her eleven, and I split the difference, pulling up at Potemkin Village with palpitations a […]

(The view of gray sky and gray waves, with whitecaps, from the deck in little city by the bay. Photo Socotra) As a midwesterner, the Labor Day weekend marks the change of season. There are weeks of summer left here in the Northland, months of it back in Virginia, but this is when the Fudgies […]

Overwhelmed   (Rven and mom. Photo Socotra.)   I am on dial-up in the house on the bluff above the Bay, which about sums it up. I am frankly and completely overwhelmed. There is more than a century’s worth of crap all around me, some precious, but mostly crap.   Five or six years of […]

    I am going to miss the Hurricane, or at least Earl, anyway. They are saying there will be five named storms this season, and the Carolinas (and maybe us in Virginia) will take the brunt of it. I don’t think it will affect business, though it clearly will have an impact on travel. […]

“Yeah,” I responded. “What was he then? Director of Naval Intelligence?”   “No, he was up at CIA by then, as the Deputy Director. Bill Studeman was the DNI,” said Mac. “Of course, he got four stars as well.”   “We wanted a four-star on the board,” said Pete. “He agreed to do it, but […]