Tall Ships New York Harbor, 1976 during Operation Sail It is almost the 4th of July, and the weather has broken in the right direction. It is sunny but cool in Washington. If it wasn’t so nuts at the office it would be a great time to kick back. The Government customer dropped a contract […]

Respect I am taking the Hubrismobile into the dealer for service this morning for service and have a classified report to pick up on the way, so I won’t be able to do justice to the story. View this as a prologue, and if you want to imagine Aretha Franklin’s magnificent voice singing the refrain […]

The Grassy Knoll The Monstrosity across the Street The small green patch that buffers Big Pink from the new construction monstrosity across Pershing Road is where the dog people go. Some of the new ones, the Rookies, let their dogs off the leash there and the animals love to run. One of the newbies even […]

  The excitement about the party had been building for weeks, ever since Mary Margaret sent out of the invitations. Everyone loves Mary, and Joe was kind enough to put his patio up for her use to cater the affair. The Fifth floor would not have worked. the invite said “three-to-six” and meant business- it […]

Idiots   Yeah, I was awake before the alarm on Saturday morning. The high summer light was going to be coming along shortly, whether I liked it or not, and my first thoughts were that I was screwed. Not the good way, not the lazy Saturday stay-in-bed-way that starts with a sly smile to your […]

Rim of the Pacific   There is more than a hint of longing in my heart this morning. From lovely Pearl Harbor, the ships of nine navies are putting to sea, sliding down the narrow channel by Hospital Point and to the deep drop-off and into the open sea. It is the twenty-first iteration of […]

Straight Shooter New Yorker Photograph Of General Taguba by Mary Ellen Mark The Supreme Court about to make a decision on the Second Amendment to the Constitution today, and naturally I am a bit nervous. Every time the High Court goes to the cupboard and drags out the venerable document there is the chance that […]

Origins   The View from Custer Hill- K. F. Roahen, Billings, Mont. I could not get up this morning. The body periodically lets me down, and maybe it is a sign that the stress that has ruled my life for the last year or two is leaking out. I know that for months I was […]

  I was walking in London’s Portobello Road a couple years ago. It is the great flea-market of the Empire that was. A lovely day, bright and sunny, and I stopped at one of the shops to examine a commemorative mug emblazoned with the smiling face of Ian Smith, white leader of break-away Rhodesia. It […]

Some of us are living in the past these days. I know I have been. It is a treat to wander through the cultural wreckage of the American Century, and the long Cold War. It is hard though, since you have to make lunch and dinner in the present, and what lurks around the corner […]