It is curious to be in the work site in the dark. The days are too short now to have any time during the week to see it in the light. I peered out from the circle of white under the streetlight. There is a new featureless plain where the old garden apartments used to […]

I was only mildly surprised to see an OpEd in the paper this morning from the Director of National Intelligence. Back in the day, the Spooks did not normally avail themselves of the editorial page of the New York Times, which appears to have been in a death struggle with the Government about how we […]

Tommy, Up North in 1972 It was gray in the morning and gray through the day with a gray drizzle that melted the gray snow into forlorn patches of ice. I thought about the Christmas letter that I used to write. It would have been out the door and gone by now, produced in November; […]

Brian Sobel’s picture of Arizona’s armored mast on the Waipio Peninsula It is a day that I cannot remember, though my father and mother can. Every American one who was alive and could understand the words that issued from the radio knew exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard. Twenty-one […]

I am going to make this short and sweet, since there is white stuff in the air, and you know what that means here: madness. It is not that big a deal, not for stolid citizens of mid-western origin. But I have adapted to this swampy town, and now recoil in horror when the season […]

I’ll meet you at the slop chute on the old Whangpoo Bring along your dip net; there’ll be enough for two There’ll be beans and carrots and some Irish stew I’ll meet you at the slop chute on the old Whangpoo!     – Anthem of the “River Rats” of the Yangtze River Patrol, sung to the […]

I woke this morning from the running dream. I don’t know what your version of it might be. Mine normally starts in some perfectly ordinary social situation, as something vast begins to unfold. Sometimes it is a natural disaster presaging the release of terrible ogres; sometimes they are from the earth, and sometimes they are […]

Former Trees at Buckingham I I want to thank my long-suffering readers. It is time to diverge from the Novel In November Project, and back to business. The Big Pink book has some possibilities, though I will treat that as a separate matter from here out. Generating 50,000 words on the same general topic is […]

Gentle readers, I know it is actually Armistice Day, though the story is of a summer past. This momentous anniversary is now celebrated as Veteran’s Day here in the United States, though remembered for what it was in Europe still. I was awake early enough to note the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of […]

Big Pink Flank I feel queasy this morning. General-President “Mushie” Musharef of Pakistan has made his choice, and declared martial law. His security forces have detained around five hundred opposition members. He has knocked the media off the air, the Constitution has been suspended, and a policy of zero tolerance for protest is in effect. […]