(Buckingham, November 1939)   I am a little peevish this morning. I am distracted by a breathtaking demonstration of how far we have fallen as an educated society. The fall has been so swift because the tumble is accelerated by astonishing technology.   If you want to get sidetracked and pissed-off, you can take the […]

(Original Klan Robe)   After the marching season was done emotion continued to run high outside the rental office at the target for integration in Arlington County, the Buckingham neighborhood.   1966. One hundred and one years since the War Between the States had concluded. The centennial was only a year past, and the demonstrators […]

  (The Hate Bus. Rockwell on right wears his Navy Flight Jacket)   I have to get to it at some point, so here it is. I have been looking for a missing pool, and the sound of the water filling up the one at Big Pink last night kept the idea fresh in my […]

(Starship Enterprise) I know the Buckingham Swim club was there in 1996, just northwest  of the corner of Henderson and 5th Road North. I saw it in overhead imagery of the neighborhood that is on file at the central library.   I don’t know how many old Spooks they have in there, probably more than let on, […]

(Marchers)   The summer of 1966 was completely normal in Arlington County, which is to say that it featured some temperate days and some that cooked the brain in the spirit in humid air wafting up from the lower south.   The District of Columbia is a cusp city, definitely not North, though close to […]

(Frances Freed’s Office Window Today)   The rains have been persistent this week, the skies a uniform gray that periodically open up in a drench. I parked the Bluesmobile in front of Big Pink and fumbled around in my leather mail-pouch for the Totes-brand umbrella.   Handy little device, those things, though not sturdy enough […]

(Remaining revetments on 17th Road)   Sorry for veering off into 1971 yesterday. It was a formative moment in a young life, that riot here in Washington, and it is entirely possible that in the process of fleeing the national capital with the Regular Army on my heels, I might have passed the Touchdown Jesus who […]

   (May Day Poster, 19781)   The classic May Day was last week, but it was on this date thirty-eight years ago that I first came to Washington on my own.   I had been there before, born by the family Rambler station-wagon. We visited the Smithsonian, I remember that, and the orange sleek shape […]

(Formal Entrance to Buckingham today) “Your only passport to this community of mansionette homes is your desire to live fully, completely and happily.” – Sign on the wall of the Buckingham Rental Office, July, 1966   It is a rainy Sunday, and visions of thundering horses on green grass and on a muddy track flickered […]

    The Government of Hong Kong is taking no crap off the New Flu. Masked constabulary surrounded the Metropark Hotel yesterday imposed a strict quarantine on the three hundred guests and workers who were within the high-rise hotel.   The authorities had been tipped off that a young Mexican man had been in the […]