The hurricane- the remnants of it, anyway- has passed. I am hoping for “dry” this afternoon, or at least only damp, since we are off for the blacktop around the stadium at College Park in about an hour.   Dreams have long died this season, though of course my real allegiance is to a […]

(Dismounted troops. Battery B, 3rd Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. US Army photo.)   I got a note from Kabul this morning. I cherish those communications, which strike me with awe at the miracles of technology that permit instantaneous communication across the time zones.   There was a time, not long ago, […]

(The Little Giant, Speaker Carl Albert)   Speaker of the House Carl Albert (D-OK-3), the most famous former resident of Big Pink, would probably have sent in his proxie for the Board to vote his unit at the annual meeting.   I say that only because he was a busy man with national responsibilities.   […]

  It would already have turned to 11 November on the Continent when the event occurred. The commemorations of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the 18th year of a new century would begin shortly, and head in this direction across the still-dark sea.   We have turned the holiday into an event […]

(The Ludendorf Rail Bridge, 1945)   The anniversary of the Fall was yesterday, or so they tell me.   I wrap my life around that long ribbon of concrete. It went up in 1961, when I was ten and the notion that our little suburban town was in imminent danger of being incinerated by Soviet […]

OK, I know you can’t keep everything. We cant do it for our own lives, much less expect to carry other people’s stuff around.   Why is cleaning out the home of a parent or elderly relative so difficult? Better to just have someone else do it, avoid the whole confusing mess of emotion and […]

(We’re here to help!)   The day was quite remarkable in its clarity and the texture of the season, and it was possible to shed the red sweater and roll the window down on the Police Cruiser. It was a day that called out for examination, the light golden and lightweight.   What surprised me, […]

(HumVee Stuck in mud.)   The Baptists are at it again. I’m sure you heard; it is what always happens after a big attack on unarmed people.   The shootings were immediately condemned by the Council on American-Baptist Relations. They had to do it, since the latest mass murder started out with the usual chilling […]

(Dr. Hasan and Hood) It has been a good week as things go, though I had no idea how over the top it could go.   I drove up to Thurgood Marshall Field- BWI- to pick up some Jersey Lab guys who came down by train for a meeting with some government guys I cooked […]

I am just saturated and not completely happy about it. Grumpy, maybe, though maybe others would call it creeping old-fartism. I got a call at dinner about someone who had just passed away in Maine, of the same sort of thing that is dragging my Dad down by the ankles.   It was good to […]