Fifteen Zeros I’m bored with the financial crisis. It has determined the results of the coming election, spoiling the anticipation. It has created a perfect storm for the young senator from Illinois, whose opportunity to leap from the state legislature to the national stage was prompted by a sex scandal that bit ascendant Republican candidate […]

Lady Day, in the Day.   I blinked open in the darkness, the fir st conscious thought coming that perhaps things had changed, that it was going to be different than it had been.   I flexed a few muscle groups to test the hypothesis. Nope, still sore from wrestling the big bike around. Nearly […]

I am going to go over to the Courthouse and vote this week. They cal it “Absentee in Person,” which is one of those non sequiturs that abound in this new century.   Arlington is a thoroughly Blue County, and I expect things to be pretty crazy on election20day at the precinct next to Big […]

Dru Blair’s “While the Giant Slept” I bought a picture the other d ay. It is stupid, I know, since I don’t have enough wall to put it on. Once I had the Kazakh guys at K&H Framing mount the thing, They do really good work, and have framed just about everything I hold dear, […]

  Stephen Crowley/The New York Times “The turmoil will not end quickly, nor will the measures taken by the government solve the underlying problems.”  Somebody said that this morning, and it could have been Secretary Paulson, or it could have been oracle Alan Greenspan.   In terms of accountability for our ruin, the Times helpfully fingered […]

I thought Obama had the edge in the debate last night, but that would not have been hard, considering the week this has been in the markets around the world.   I was only mildly surprised when I heard that Iceland was considering going out of business. The hardy islanders must have been pretty heavily […]

European Central Bank Chiefs Meet in London, Oct 2008   I was awake in the night. Not unpleasant, this aging thing. Just a few more chores to take care of in the silence, and time to go over things, roll them around in the brain.   I was going to try to construct a tale […]

The attacks of 9/11 should have taught me something about the weather. It is vastly powerful but not sentient; there is no caring in the gentle breeze or the fine high-quality sunshine of early autumn. It appeared there would be time for a long walk in the sunshine, and a session on the Hog to […]

It had been good, if a bit sobering, sitting in the pews of the Christ Episcopal Church in Rockville, MD. It left me both giddy and a little disoriented. I drove up there from Virginia with the top down on the Hubrismobile, and my hair was a glorious mess by the time I arrived.   […]

  So, it’s Friday, things are nuts at the office, and I thought I would duck home and take the last two conference calls out on the balcony where I could expose my skin to the sun in the first brisk breeze of autumn. I am reluctant to let the summer go.   It was […]