Picture Postcard of the Railroad Station and Downtown Bay City, circa 1900   I have been daydreaming about North Michigan lately. I don’t do that so much in the winter, but I cannot help myself when the steam rises up out of the ground on the flat banks of the wrong=2 0side of the Potomac […]

Trish from Australia. Vic at far right in white shirt. Photo by EVA RUSSO/Richmond TIMES-DISPATCH   It is impossible to forget what happened here in Richmond, particularly if you live in a city that calls itself the Capital of the Free World. This city had the same aspiratio n, to be known in the same […]

Live Fast I’m headed for Richmond this morning, capital of the Old South. There is a motorcycle dealership down there that has a training program for how to ride one. The State insists upon it, and I think it is a skill that would be useful to have in the coming world that will have […]

  I am way behind this morning- sleep is good, and this was a hell of a week for frantic activity- but now it is pushing eight o’clock and I have a road trip to accomplish this afternoon, and the pool is going to be a miss altogether if I do not get my ass […]

I had to be in the office early, since it was a question of timing, and was hasty leaving Big Pink.    I am one of the few who can unlock a safe that has a few pieces of proprietary paper in it, and a fellow from our office out in the County wanted them […]

It was cool before dawn on the first walk of the day. I was thinking about gangsters, and the story I was not going to get to this morning, and it was not until we hit the glass doors that I realized I had forgotten my glasses. There is a lot of stuff to get […]

Charles “Lucky” Luciano enjoys a beer in Italy, after the War   I got tagged with a proposal and will have to work this morning. I was going to generate a story along the lines of “Deal with the Devil,” and it may yet come about the alliance of Naval Intelligence and the mob. The next […]

 Ex-Normandie, USS Lafayette capsized at Pier 88, February 1942 They still don’t know don’t about the fire that stated on the 9th of February in 1942. It was a doozy, and it torched the Glory of France as effectively as the end-run of German panzers around the impregnable barrier of the Maginot Line.   The official […]

  Normandie It is the 4th of July, and there will be fireworks on the Mall tonight, a colorful reminder of wartime sacrifice and revolution. People who have seen the deadly fire-colored real thing sometimes don’t like the sound. It makes them a little nervous, the way all of us feel now when a jet is […]

Big Pink Tater Salad Mom’s Tater Salad by Death Junior   I was going to tell you about the sinking of the Normandie this morning, but that happened a long time ago, and it will keep till tomorrow. The news out of Colombia about the big rescue of the people the FARC has been holding […]