My sons are leaving for the island of their birth this morning, starting from Dulles and O’Hare, respectively. They intend to poke around the places they knew only as little boys, and I envy them the gentle breezes.   It is bone cold here in Michigan after a Christmas thaw, and the longest night […]

    It is Christmas Day; I am in the Big Top for the moment, which is what we call the little apartment above the garage that I use when I am here in the Northland. It has some great memories and was Dad’s last great project, when he could still do things.   It […]

Gentle Readers,   I am Elyria, Ohio, in a Super 8, since I could not make a credible attempt at finishing the drive in one day on the second shortest of the year.   Dante would have reserved one of the rings of his hell for motels like this, but it has grown on me […]

(Nebraska Avenue in Navy Days) Oh, yes, of course there was now an NSA, the radio equivalent of DIA. The creation of the agency had merged the Girl’s School activities of the Army Security Agency at Arlington Hall and the Naval Security Group at Nebraska Avenue in the NW District.   Both facilities had been […]

(CNO Arliegh Burke (l) is relieved by George Anderson. Photo Life Magazine)   At the height of the Cuban crisis, the new Secretary with his slicked-back hair would stalk past the Marine with only a glance into CNO Flag Plot on the fourth deck of the Pentagon and demand to speak on radiotelephone with the […]

(North America as viewed from apogee of a Russian Molnaya National Security Orbit. Letters not to scale.) We will continue our brief account of the career of Admiral Rex in a different stream of reporting, and eventually combine it all into a coherent thread. He lived and served in remarkable times, and his contributions should […]

(The view from Big PInk) Here, the snowplows worked through the night. The flakes have stopped and the skies are thin and clear and cold.   This has been the deepest snow in record in December- twenty inches here in Arlington; sixteen on the National Mall- and the consequences are yet to play out.   […]

Holiday Roads   So the power is on, and the cable Internet works, and if the snow is still coming down at an inch-an-hour, so what? By God, it is good to be at my table this morning, and it was good to spend a few hours in my own bed. It did not look […]

Federal Office Building Number 2- 1990- the Navy Annex The snow is coming tonight, they say, maybe heavy. It will not be the first of the year, though if it is as bad as they say, it will snarl the capital for days.   I remember my first real Washington snowfall. It was Veteran’s Day […]

U-2 Flying into Atsugi Base, 1959- Photo Toda Yasunori The compound within the confines of the American air base at Atsugi is no longer fenced. There is no marker to note that it ever was. Years ago, though, a student of history could still find the concrete footings of the poles that held the security […]