We were at Fort Myer in the rain last night for the annual formal dinner of our little tribe of Spooks. It had been falling pervasively through the day, a steady soaking. It was inconvenient to be in Black Tie in the wet, since winged collars tended to droop immediately, and the jaunty bow ties […]

The Arlington Cops made a routine announcement yesterday. The corpse at the bottom of the Route 50 retaining wall had a name. In life, it had been Rene Vaquez, a Hispanic man born in 1947, a long way from here, and only a few years after the big Garden Apartment complex was opened to much […]

Chinese immigrants to America called California the “Golden Mountain.” The Central Americans who came to Arlington called the garden apartments in the Buckingham neighborhood “The Golden Door.” Both groups recognized the possibilities of America, though the gold was not for free, and climbing the mountain and passing through the door was going to take a […]

Rain, thank God. The earth smells rich this morning. It is the first rain in weeks, and maybe the draught may be starting to break. It has killed the grass, and it is doing no good for the trees of the County. At least we have no howling dry wind as they have had in […]

I was going to try to be forthright and say something meaningful on the issues of gender this week, but I guess I ought to just give up on that. If there is someone out there that understands either men or women, please speak up. America at large seems to be settling into the same […]

I checked last night on my walk. No one has cleaned up the death scene at the little camp at the bottom of the wall. I have not checked this morning to see if it has been re-occupied. I don’t know who to call about it in the County Government, nor even which department might […]

I saw the police on Monday, the day the death was discovered by the larger community. There had been a suspicion that something was wrong for several days before the discovery. Ruth is Big Pink’s dayshift Concierge. She does not drive, and consequently has a better handle on the neighborhood than many of the residents […]

I sat up this morning when I got to the Times. I have been wandering through the Air Force cover for the CIA Blackbird program, still a little giddy about my encounter with Article 138, the stealthy Mach-three spy plane parked in the lot next to the New Headquarters Building at Langley. The Times article […]

Text from the Uniform Code of Military Justice: “(a) Any person subject to this chapter who attempts or offers with unlawful force or violence to do bodily harm to another person, whether or not the attempt or offer is consummated, is guilty of assault and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct” That is […]

The Cold War was a necessary evil. It has not been popular to say that for a while, though Secretaries Gates and Rice probably were thinking a lot about that in Moscow this week. As one of the legion of Warriors from the struggle, I have been waiting for the parade that never came. The […]