“Many years ago, a friend sussed out the reason that men love Home Depot so much — they get to stand around in public together and scratch their balls . . . what part do I need for this? . . . uh, I dunno . . . you ever seen sumpin like this? . […]

(German Replica of Chinese Water Torture Device) It has been dripping in there for weeks. It did not matter how hard you pushed the handle toward the wall, the cold water valve dripped, dripped and dripped.   They say a steady drip can waste $20 or more in water in a short time. Multiply that […]

(Breakfast for the Intrepid Mayor of Refuge Farm) I am down at the farm this morning. The time here is precious- never enough of it. There are affairs that must be dealt with back in the capital, trifling ones, but necessary.   The light is just coming up after a velvet night with a profusion […]

(Entrance to the Pentagon Metro, just behind the bus platform) I have intense feelings about the old building, and they came back hard this past week, since I had to do some business there. That was before the shooting, and I could not bring myself to dig into it yesterday.   There was too much […]

But the little kitchen was purely 1964. No dishwaser. Basic icebox. nice gas range, but every dish that was used had to be washed in the single sink, and you know the peril of allowing even a single dish to remain unwashed in the shallow sink- soon they multiply.   So I had the Guatemalan […]

(KOBAYASHI ISSA, 1763-1828)   UKI-GUSA TO MISHI MA NI IKE  NO KORI KANA   While I looked at the lilly-pads The pond Froze – Issa   I have a pal who elected to stay in Japan rather than leave, once his tour in World Famous Fighter Squadron 151 was done. He has risen to become […]

I still have my Route 16 Centurion patch- one of the most elegant ever embroidered by the crafty Nipponese in the Honcho-ku outside the main gate at the Yokosuka Naval Base. You could have patches made a lot of places in the Far East back then. Korea was cheap, the P.I. cheaper still, but there […]

(Patch design inked in the Cheju-do Modified Location (Modloc) during Exercise TEAM SPIRIT 1979) A pal is reading about the run-up to World War Two through the pages of a biography of Dwight Eisenhower. He wrote to me, marveling at the Louisiana Maneuvers, a vast set of exercises conducted by the U.S. Army in the […]

Time to go. Time to leave Vancouver and the Games of 2010; time for this damned winter to be banished; the moment for some of us to head overseas for semesters far afield; time for others to leave places that had been home for a long time, and strike out in a new direction.   […]

(Heckle, sans Jeckle, surveys an uncertain future)   I have a pal who is an attorney and lives in Oz.   There are enough contradictions inherent in both profession and location that I marvel at how life can be lived so far away form the Imperial City. He tends to be a liberal and I […]