(Down by the Bow) You may have noticed that the once-vaunted naval power of the artist formerly known at the Soviet Union has hit a slippery patch.   You may also not care; goodness knows there is enough to worry about elsewhere. Here in the sultry Imperial it is possibly more urgent to contemplate that […]

  (Nat King Cole’s Greatest Hit)   This is20more like it. The air is heavy with moisture, and sweat beads the forehead and rolls down under the shirt. Sit in the car for anylength of time and our back becomes a great dark blob of sweat.   The feeling of the air conditioning in the […]

  (Opinion Polls) The Daily Socotra has it’s standards, and we never deviate from them except from the occasional bout of sloth and laziness.   For example, riding up in the elevator after work yesterday I saw the single-paragraph announcement on the mobile bulletin board in the car. “A special meeting of the Board will […]

(Crystal City in Perspective)   The thing about “pouches” is that they shout out the wrong message. Mine is a non-descript brown canvas contraption, nothing flashy, and no corporate logos. Someone in the government had to specify the requirements, and I suspect a long time ago.   “Security bag, Document, Model A-1; lockable.”   They […]

(Down East Feast) The crisis de jour was the stupid pool. It is the center of social life here in the summer, our solace and exercise venue. It is a harbor of rumors, anchorage of the the grapevine. Happy Hour watering hole for some, anchorage of aberrant behavior for others. Blue magnet. It is what […]

(Juggling Numbers- W. Kozak)   My pal the Admiral is going to be 90 years old next month. He is not going to make as big a deal out of it as you might think. He told me over a cocktail the other evening that he had set a goal of living to be 80, […]

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 […]