(Kitchen in The Dumbarton Model at The Madison at Ballston Station) It was an unsettling weekend, all around. The weather lurched from a gray drizzle to a brush with sunshine and temperatures that scraped the high sixties.   Mother Nature could not seem to make up her mind, and the Visiting Dog gave not a […]

  (Rendering of The Madison at Ballston Station) The phone on the wall of the glass air-lock was one of those mystery devices with a scrolling menu intended to allow you to call the boxes inside only it you already know something about the people you want to contact inside.   Back at Big Pink, […]

(The Visiting Dog)   The Visiting Dog tugged at me, dragging me forward along the fresh white concrete sidewalk next to the fresh blacktop. This had been an alley that ran along the old Buckingham Village garden home, separated by a stern but decorative fence from the high-rise assisted living facility at Culpepper Garden.   […]

  The pelting rain made me think of Dwight Eisenhower, which is a bit of a leap, I’ll grant, but capitalism in the microcosm has much in common with the awesome decision that resulted in the commitment to hurl the Allied Forces against Hitler’s Atlantic Wall at D-Day in 1944.   Like Dwight, the Hermanos Brothers Paving Company had all […]

(LT Richard Welsch) No story this morning- dog pooped in the bathroom, had to write an obit, blah blah, and a nine o’clock I have to run to. Rain, so no Mexicans paving.  The President is going to take questions from the American people via internet later today, confirming my suspicion that he thinks he was […]

(A-1 Towing- “Your Choice in Arlington for efficient vehicle removal!”)   It is one minute past the deadline for the residents of Big Pink to move their damned cars, or have them moved by force by the skilled professionals of A-1 Towing. This is day two of the Main Event, the resurfacing by the Hermanos […]

(FDIC Chair Sheila C. Bair)   It is all about how we feel when we get up in the morning. The Mexicans have brought a gigantic machine to the grounds at Big Pink. It looks vaguely like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and eats old asphalt.   We are going to re-pave the parking lot, and when […]

(Boots)   We are still at war, as best I can determine. There were suicide bombings in Iraq this morning, and ambushes in Afghanistan, and the Pakis appear to be folding in the face of the Taliban. The fundamentalists have spilled out of the Swat Valley and have not put down their weapons as promised. […]

Vic 23 March 2009 Columbia Gardens Columbia Gardens Cemetery buttresses the eastern end of Buckingham, where the little houses end and the garden apartments begin. It real Arlington, family-owned and operated since 1917. In those days, the gently-rolling thirty-eight acres were surrounded by small farms.   In the Spring, before the leaves erupt on the […]

(The old Parish Stocks at Meldreth)    The first blooms are out, brilliant pastels on the bushes and bright cheery yellow on the daffodils out in front of Big Pink. The earth is repeating the cycle as it always does. So are we.   I wish we were up to it, but it appears that […]