(Deepwater Horizon burning prior to sinking. Photo Rueters/Coast Guard) If nothing else, the month ends with all of us stuck between a rock and a hard spot. I will grant you that I am querulous at the end of this calendar box. The San Jose Sharks beat my Red Wings in game one in the […]

Lochiel, Lochiel! beware of the day When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array! For a field of the dead rushes red on my sight, And the clans of Culloden are scattered in fight.   -Campbell   I don’t know what documents my Scottish forbearers had to have when the King decided to clear […]

  “No, Steve, I think its more like we both have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and you broke in to steal the TV set, and you found out I’d been there first, and you said. “Hey that’s no fair! I wanted to steal the TV set!” – Bill Gates’ response to Steve Jobs, after […]

(President for Life Manuel Noriega) I am still feeling the effects of the weekend ramble across the vastness of the eastern heartland of America. In a way, the traumatic effect on the body has been good; I did not for an instant think about Financial Reform; the Johnson County War; Oil and Gas law; or […]

(Hole in the Wall, East Portal)    It was an epic trip, played out in a minor fashion and human scale, and I am a mess this morning. I can’t quite believe it all happened in less than 48 hours, and I am here to tell you that the nation’s infrastructure is a mess.   […]

  (Nate Champion. Drawing copyright Richard Flore) I am writing at bedtime. I am buoyed by 44 push-ups conducted by my son, which completed the trifecta of trials that will position himself to join the United States Navy.   It is pretty emotional, coming on a day that was filled with emotions.I picked up Admiral […]

After 1869, it was the freaking Wild West out there once the flood of immigrants, investors and settlers began to board to the cars of the new railroad and head west.   Californians came East. The West was suddenly open, once the spike was driven at Promontory Summit.   Oh, it did not happen all […]

(Union Pacific Engine #119 and crew on the Promontory Trestle in Utah, just east of the Summit)   I am not from those wild empty lands Out West, but I have traveled across them many times, headed for temporary homes in Denver and Park City, or driving from Salt Lake up to Evanston at the […]

(Boston Commons)   Ray is an old pal of mine, and the most learned Master Chief Bos’uns Mate you will ever have the pleasure to meet.   He is not a Navy man; he would sneer at that. He has all his commercial papers and is a real Mariner, a commercial one, in addition to […]

(Wyoming elk herd near Johnson County, WY)   21 April 2010: Please see the Editor’s Note below for additional clarification. I have a picture of a herd of Elk out on the vast prairie. They are a magnificent animal in the wild, but they are rightly wary creatures. The image shows the animals wandering on […]