I asked my mother one time what the toughest age to deal with was, kid-wise. I think we were still in the sleep deprivation phase of parenthood, the insistent little beings still inarticulate, and able to express their needs only with loud piercing urgency. Mom is a saint, but she rattled me effectively when she […]

Apogee and Perigee are terms are most commonly used in literature to describe high and low points, exhilaration and despair, respectively, but those that deal with orbital mechanics and the properties of space vehicles know they are just the high and low points in a recurring circle around the earth. Tony Blair, for example, is […]

I feel like Jimmy Carter must have felt back in the day, when he announced that there was a malaise hanging over the land, and the American People, suspicious of the French language, promptly elected the amiable Ronald Reagan. It was about the format of the message. Mr. Reagan conveyed a titanic struggle with global […]

There is a regular networking meeting we have established to stay current, and leverage our contacts and experience. This is the first one this morning, scheduled for 0745. We have chosen a charming little bakery in Shirlington Villiage to meet, convenient to dwelling work and interstate. �Best Buns� is the name of the place, and […]

Able Dogs I don’t want to visit the current war this morning, not again, and it was bad over the weekend. I have been gone long enough that I cannot quite capture where the Congress is, since they follow the issues like little kids around a soccer ball. I hear the House intelligence committee wants […]

Gold Cup I’m in trouble this morning. It is my fault, and I dropped out of touch and off the net. I had a note which offered me free transportation and open bar at Great Meadow out in Loudoun County for the running of the Virginia Gold Cup. There was plenty of work stacked up […]

I’m whipped, but it is all self-inflicted and I am not going to whine about it. The show must go on, and amid the wreckage of a week on the road, the laundry and old dishes and dry house-plants, I have to make a series of go-no-go decision about the day. That is precisely the […]

View full size I tooled out of Chicago in a piece-of-crap Toyota Corolla, rented at the train station downtown. The Dan Ryan Expressway was being rebuilt again, and traffic was frozen in place between endless rows of Jersey barriers. No surprise, really, since the only time to work on the roads is when the frost […]

By seven I knew that there was little else to be known from the 35 th Floor. I had to be back down on the street, or I would assume the aspect of an angel, looking down at the mites that plied the concrete. I am no angel, and I went down to the streets […]

View full size This is starting off as a strange morning. It is May Day, of course, and a holiday for the last Communists down south. I am looking down at the Chicago River, the sun now nearly full up. I normally get up at 0445, whatever time zone it is and go through the […]