I ran into Mardy One at the Staples office store on North Glebe. It was a completely random encounter, and we took a second to register our acquaintance since the context was so alien; I rarely stop there and don’t know what her office supply needs might be. I don’t even see her at Big […]

I walked through Buckingham last night, away from the vast bulk of Big Pink and into Little Salvador to try to let some of the anger boil off in the cool air. I almost did not bother to lock the door, based on my conversation earlier, but force of habit made me put the key […]

Relax, Gentle Readers. Do not be alarmed. This is part of the Big Pink book, and only shows what is to come through what has gone before. December 2002 Freezing Rain TV Weatherman Bob Ryan was right. This is going to be a nasty, messy winter. It is raining cold and hard on the Buckingham […]

Strategic Communications ? Tory Clark, 2003 It is raining cats and dogs and I have to formulate a strategi plan to get my butt to Chantilly by eight this morning. It is scheduled to be a jam-packed day that cascades from a 0800 two-hour meeting into another session at a building in Fairfax fon unclassified […]

It is a pleasant Sunday in Northern Virginia, and I don’t have to work until later in the day. I am thinking about taking a drive up the Parkway and look at the trees along the Potomac. In the Fall I often stop at Fort Marcy, the old Civil War earthwork near the Dolly Madison […]

I was slogging through the Times this morning, trying to dodge the obligatory Socotra task, attempting to avoid the Quarterly draft I have to get to lay-out this week and scowling at the half-done Big Pink novella that needs another twenty thousand words to meet the Novel-in-November deadline. It was easier not to think about […]

Breakfast at the Rin Con Cito Chapin is one of those things that makes you feel better about the rest of the day, or would be if it didn’t provide more things to worry about. I am not much of a breakfast person, which is not to say that I don’t enjoy eating. The evidence […]

The key about visitations in Arlington is where to park. I had an official letter I needed to deliver to the widow, and wanted to show my respect. Mardy One confirmed to me that the funeral home was death on illegal parking. It is a symptom of the explosive growth in the Ballston neighborhood north […]

The George Schultz Foreign Training Center, AKA Arlington Hall Station If we are short on anything in this tale of Buckingham, it would be sex. There, I’ve said it. It is the reason we are all here, of course, and more so for some of us than others. Based on the number of baby carriages […]

The Spooks had a good run at Arlington Hall Station, and the national security aspect at the heart of the Buckingham neighborhoods went on until the mid-1980s. You might have thought that the men in the long coats from the Soviet Embassy would have lost interest after the Venona affair was revealed to them, and […]