(October at Brandy Station) I’m down at the farm, and the coffee is not bad. It was a marvelous drive in the Bluesmobile down here, feeling the congestion of the city fall away. Early casualties of the season, the first leaves, danced across the road and the sun did not beat down, it embraced. Football […]

(Flag folded for retirement ceremony) There was a phrase we were supposed to utter to the Officer of the Deck when we left the ship. I as delighted to find that there was more than one as time went by. It was a nuance of language, important only in the relative terms our captivity to […]

  (Parking Meters)   I have some friends- bless them- who volunteer in Hospice programs. Those groups help the terminally ill confront the inevitable with peace, comfort and dignity.   It is among the most selfless of volunteer activities, and the hardest. All of the sturm unt drang of life is burned away for the […]

It is pretty cool, having a secret holiday.   Oh, all right. It is not that secret, not like some mystical rite that is conducted in some inky basement at Langley, or below the flood-plain of the Potomac River at Bolling Air Force Base.   It is little known, though, I will grant you. We […]

(Olde English “D” of the Detroit Tigers Major League Baseball Franchise)   If we were not technologically challenged, Muhammed would probably have tweeted the progress of the double-header in Detroit.   He is our life-line to the Motor City, though he does not live there any more than the rest of us. He is out […]

(The Shelf Reliance One Year Food Supply)   Many reputable authors disagree about what humankind should expect on Dec. 21, 2012, when the Maya’s “Long Count” calendar runs out, marking the end of a 5,126-year era.   Some are predicting widespread catastrophe. There is a movie about 2012 that will debut in November- you can […]

(Flight Deck of Pan Am Flight 103)  I wish Bill Safire was here to help frame the debate about what to do about Iran. Man, he could turn a phrase.   I don’t think anyone will ever top that “Nattering Nabobs” line he crafted for Vice President Agnew, a nolo contendere crook of the Nixon […]

(The Great Bridge near the Dismal Swamp) I became a believer in this Fall for real yesterday in the sprawling parking lot at College Park in the state that adjoins Virginia to the east.   Oh, the squirrels outside the balcony that look me eye-to-eye in the morning have been adherents for weeks, eating the […]

(1968 Zippo presentation lighter of (then)Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., USN, Commander, US Naval Forces Vietnam.) No adventures this morning, gentle readers, nor railing about the injustice of the system, or the follies of our times.   I got word late yesterday that a distinguished colleague has been laid low. His son told me […]

(Culpeper Minutemen Flag)   I took my thermos-cup of coffee and lit up a Luckie as I walked out of my gravel driveway onto the narrow black-top of the farm lane. The stones crunched under my sneakers. The sky was blue and the temperature just on the verge of sweater weather.   I was wearing […]