(USS Nevada (BB-36) looking forlorn the week after the Admiral saw her in February 1942 at Hospital Point, Pearl Harbor, HI)    It is gray here and raining, and a trip to the Pentagon looms as vast as the bulk of the pale brown sandstone building.   History is a funny thing. It is being […]

I was going to get to the cornbread stuffing recipe this morning, I swear it, and thought about it when I turned off the paved road at the abandoned Rapidan Mill and plunged across ten miles of bad gravel road in the farm country of north central Virginia.   The single lane was no challenge […]

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So, I was like stunned this morning when I read the paper. No wars, I thought, no health care debate I have about had it with all that, at least this week. But my eyes got all round and filled with wonder as I read the latest.   “WTF,” I murmured into my Russian coffee. […]

(Capitol Christmas Tree- Courtesy US Senate)   We have never seen an onslaught like this so early in the festive season. I can’t say I have heard a Christmas carol yet, but everything else is happening a month early.   A gigantic glass Christmas tree was hanging in the soaring atrium of the National Harbor […]

(W. C. Fields as sideshow barker Gabby Gilfoil in the 1927 film Two Flaming Youths- Corbis-Bettmann Archives.) “You need perfume? We got perfume, how ’bout an engagement ring? Something for the little lady, something for the little lady, Something for the little lady, hmm Three for a dollar We got a year-end clearance, we got […]

“Step right up, step right up, step right up, Everyone’s a winner, bargains galore That’s right, you too can be the proud owner Of the quality goes in before the name goes on One-tenth of a dollar, one-tenth of a dollar, we got service after sales…” What a song! It rolls, it laughs, it reaches […]

(Japanese Emperor Hirohito Calls on General of the Army Doug MacArthur, Tokyo, 1945)   They are at it again, bow-wowing over the greeting of the President of the United States to some overseas monarch. The one to the King of Saudi Arabia still has the Right agog, the bow to a reigning Islamic Potentate, guardian […]

(Brandy Station Review, June 1863 – painting and copyright by artist Don Troiani)   Yesterday was busy, since it started out with a mild case of disorientation, as you may have heard, and then I had to get down and back to the farm at Brandy Station- cat issues, of course, and some seasonal issues […]

(Oh, my God.)   I am surprised my head is still on straight this morning. The story started to write itself last night. I woke up just after two; that was a simple function of being so groggy by nine that there was no point in trying to stay up any longer.   I knew […]