(The Moon at full)    I was fourth in line at the Culpeper Gardens Assisted Living Facility this morning.   That is our local polling station, and I walked with one hand in my pocket and the other clutched around my travel cup of coffee. The time change is harder to manage than it used […]

(Kelly’s Ford Marker at the Inn at Kelly’s Ford)   Young Major John Pelham had a memorable December in 1862. The host of General Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac was moving out of Fredericksburg, resplendent in their blue uniforms. Pelham’s Alabama Creoles had their “Napoleon detachment” of light mobile cannon hitched up and ready […]

March 17, 1863. Major John Pelham, “The gallant Pelham,” was 24, and there was no more bold a soldier on the field on either side of the struggle between the states.   I was driving down to see where he caught the splinter in the brain. He was a man of parts, you see, with […]

(Virginia Historical Marker F-10) I left the Graffiti House puzzled again by history. The whole thing is baffling, layer on layer of it laid down like shale, crushing what is below it.   That damn house up on the hill was symbolic of it. I bear no ill-will to the angry man who built the […]

(The Graffiti House at Brandy Station)   I turned right at the light. I was stopped anyway at the red; the smooth pavement of Route 29 is hypnotic when you have the speed right, and hit all of them on the green. You can be in downtown DC in an hour and a half, if […]

  (Oxi, 2009)   I was turning off Virginia Route 29 the other day to investigate something, liberated from the relentless focus on making the next gree light three miles down the road toward Remington. There is a great story there, and I was going to get to that this morning, when I got a […]

It is a great time to be driving large motorcars around rural Virginia. The bright green of the grass has faded now, and the trees are brushed with color along the stretch of Route 29 that parallels the railroad tracks that lead down to Orange and points south and west. There are two stoplights on […]

(David Garrett in a promo photo for his American Tour) I normally hunker down close to home on Sunday evenings. It is safe at Big Pink, and mostly quiet. For a variety of reasons associated with a spontaneous donation to Public Broadcasting, I found myself doing one of those things I have been meaning to […]

(Marilyn and Tom on the Wall) Ah, the rain! On Rt.29 yesterday it came down so hard that visibility was quite limited and the cars crept. I sat in the cruiser in the driveway for about ten minutes waiting for the pounding to ease. I wandered around inside the house, unable to start hauling this […]

(Pasta E Pagioli)   It was a day filled with small triumphs and minor inconsequential tragedies. It was a near thing, watching the skies yesterday afternoon, to get the Harley over to the gas station for the annual safety inspection.   Earlier, I found that Ben the Moroccan barber had decided to come to work; […]