Based on an interview with Vic Socotra, great-great nephew of Patrick Griffin. Genealogical information was compiled by Barbara Foley Nakaska in 1963. She was Patrick’s great-niece,  and  heard the stories first hand. The old Irish Confederate- 1905 Patrick Martin Griffin, one of the most colorful figures to have fought in the Battle of Raymond, was […]

They’re Back I had a rental car in New York last month, and the nice lady at Hertz did not have the stripped-down model I reserved in accordance with company policy. She kindly gave me one equipped with a GPS receiver mounted on a stalk that protruded like an alien from the console in the […]

Sashy was not as happy to see me as usual. She is the tiny Guatemalan gal who keeps Big Pink’s financial records in order. The great pile of concrete would collapse without her, and she is a woman of many talents. At the moment, I needed her for her Notary Seal and a lot of […]

Swift Boat HSV-2 Swift No, it is not the famous riverine speedboat of the Vietnam era that sank John Kerry’s presidential run. This is something else altogether. It is either a marvel of advanced science, or a strategic disaster in progress. Maybe it is both. I am gong to take a deep breath this morning. […]

The Bombe NCR Building 26 Being Encased at Dayton, 1960s The hairs are going up on the back of my neck. I am glad I don’t know anything about what is going on in the world where I used to live. I sense there is something afoot, and I am pleased I have nothing to […]

Cherry Blossoms I have lost most of my innocence, and I tend to approach life with the surliness born of experience, expecting to find the cut deal and sweet angle. I am working on the charity-to-others thing, though. I hope at the end of days to arrive again at sweet idiocy. That marvelous state of […]

I began to sneeze yesterday, and I carefully checked my vitals, thinking I might have been tagged with the last head cold of winter. It was not until I headed out for a trip across the District that I realized everything was fine and normal. Just pollen and alergies. The early trees are in bloom, […]

Organic Soup I don’t normally devote much time thinking about Wolfgang Puck, the famous chef and entrepreneur. We operate in different circles, and there is enough flying around in the ether to worry about. I cringed over the British captives in Iran, particularly when I saw the headscarf draped across the head of the lone […]

It is Spring now, and time of an exhilarating game of global chess. The Senate sent a message to the President yesterday, setting a deadline for the removal of forces from the Gulf and attaching it to the supplemental funding bill to continue military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is an interesting bit of […]

Trilobites Mount Lemmon is a massive piece of rock that thrusts up out of the Arizona desert toward heaven and almost makes it. It is so tall that the mountain has a different ecosystem at the top than it does at the bottom. Green and cool, while the desert below is blasted and sere. My […]