There was nothing in the air that a very long walk, some intensive and sobering history, and a Victoria Bitters at King O’Mally’s down the street couldn’t cure- that and Ivan, the Croatian, who had an opinion on everything.   Ivan was not drinking; he was in his shop filled with sport jerseys of every […]

Novotel Hotel Room, Canberra, in wide angle lens The first thing I heard after landing in the Capital was about Paris.   There is only one baggage carousel at Canberra, though there are flights out all the time. The Navy Chief was arriving, if the three-star-car out front with the Bo’sun Warrant Officer next it […]

Gentle Readers, Vic will be traveling today, further and longer than I would like. It will be one sealed tube after another, hurtling from tri-graph to tri-graph: IAD to LAX to SYD and eventually into CAN. There, once arrived in the Antipodes, I am supposed to offer useful commentary on how a nation of twenty […]

The Battle of Midway, 4-7 June 1942, was still going on all those Junes ago, and two Junes later, on this day, the immense invasion of the Continent surged in steel and flesh across the Channel. The first was a halt to the long retreat. The second was the beginning of the end. A glass […]

Stress did it, maybe. I am partly paralyzed still, shooting pains radiating down the right side of my neck and into my shoulder. That and the change of season, and being outside and in the water. But how could the joyful, rhythmic motion through the chlorinated water, weightless, have caused this? It is counter-intuitive. Motion […]

SS General Sherman Getting out of bed took a concerted plan this morning. Everything is fine, south of the waterline, but the critical zone between shoulders and hair is partly frozen. A stiff neck is a polite term for it. Hot water may be part of the answer. Before trying that, I glanced through the […]

USS Pueblo at Pyongyang, DPRK Well, you ask, what does the strafing of the American intelligence collection ship by Israelis have to do with the opening of Korea to trade by the West? Is this anything that matters on a Saturday morning with the summer before us, ripe and filled with promise? We know that […]

It is the Queen’s Birthday here, which is to say that the land is in a festive mood, though it is not actually the Queen’s birthday, but an excellent three day weekend that has left Canberra deflated like a limp balloon.   That took me aback, a bit. The Queen actually turned eighty-one back on […]

The little church is around the corner of Madison Avenue, at E. 29th, just barely. When it was new, one hundred and fifty years ago, it was on the outskirts of the city with nothing but farmland and trees to the north. Now, of course, it is southern Mid Town Manhattan, and walking distance from […]

I was walking around on eggshells as the Peruvians sawed away merrily on holidays and during quiet hours, as established by Condominium Regulation. I remember living in base housing and having some old by-the-book-bastard call the Shore Patrol on you for infractions of the regulations. Like cutting the lawn before ten in the morning, or […]