We are just about into the Dogs Days of August, when the city at the confluence of the Potomac and the Anacostia melts into the softening asphalt.   Of course, that is not happening this strange season. It makes me think something is going on, and I feel hyper-alert about it. There was a time […]

(Gilbert’s Shooting Range Logo)   Time is growing short for this summer. I looked for the lunar disc that had shown so brightly forty years ago, the day that the Men in the Moon departed. I remember how brilliant it was that summer, when everything seemed open to possibility.   Good possibility, that is. I […]

(A last supper) Jiggs was a sailor, first and foremost, and it is impressive to see what he has managed to achieve on his patio, a proud island of lush vegetation at the west oend of Big Pink, fronting the access road and the whiz of Route 50 beyond.   He was on minesweepers, back […]

(Saturn Booster with Werhner Von Braun)   It dipped down into the upper fifties last night, with low humidity. There is something wrong with all this, but I will take it while it is happening. I don’t permit myself to be as black in this public space as I feel sometimes. With the Jet Stream […]

(Uncle Walter Removes His Glasses at the News of JFK’s Death, 1963) I mourn the passing this morning of Uncle Walter. I got the word on the evening news, which I rarely watch these days. It was not like it was, back in the day of print news and the golden age of broadcast news. […]

(Conway Twitty Commemorative .45) I am on a bunch of mailing lists, as I am sure you are. The Democratic Party got ahold of me through my shameless boosterism of the candidacy of Governor Bill Richardson for the highest office in the land, and will not let go.   They have, in turn, shared me […]

(Donk’s House Band) It is a quiet morning, soft and cool, very unlike DC’s normal going-on-August feel of a soggy beach towel, rife with the scent of sweat and mold.   I was thinking about the show at Donk’s while I shoveled out the company mail in the morning silence of Tunnel Eight, I saw […]

(Neon Donks Marquee) The theater is about halfway between Moon and Hudgins, which is about the way I felt. I was in the back of the Outback, along for the ride in the full darkness of the Middle Neck of Virginia.   I confess I was a bit drowsy from the length of the day, […]

(Robert “King” Carter’s Tomb, Christ Church, White Flint, VA)   My man Deng Xiaoping once famously observed that it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice. I was thinking about that as I looked at Heckle and Jeckle, the two feral felines who permit me to occupy […]

(Zanjeer Zani religious flagellation device.. Cavendish photo)   I had plenty of time to think behind the wheel of the trusty Bluesmobile as I flogged it downstate. It’s a ine car to drive in a crisis, a lot like taking your living room couch out on the highway. The police model has the big engine, […]