Epiphany The temperature was rising back toward normal in Washington, which is to say that cold front had passed away to the chill waters of the north Atlantic, and the warm, wet Gulf air was awirling back, damping the shirt between the shoulder blades. I was getting disoriented at the desk on the sixth floor […]

I heard about a troop of volunteers, who don greasepaint and travel to areas of the world with real needs to cheer up the kids. Give them a diversion from the crushing misery of daily reality. I assume there are big feet and honking horns. The organization calls itself “Clowns Without Borders.” I salute them, […]

Each day you do not learn something, you die a little. I was fortunate to learn several things before breakfast, which puts me on par with The White Queen in “Through the Looking Glass.” She had a conversation with the White Queen, a woman of extraordinary rendition who claimed to be “One hundred and one, […]

The Sea Dog My pal Boats is the kind of guy we used to call “a sea dog.” It is not disparaging. Far from it. It is a little bit like the dramatic first sentence of Moby Dick. The narrator says “Call me Ishmael,” and then it is off to the hunt for the White […]

Bringing it Home I know that America does not float serene in a sovereign sea. You know it, too, whenever you get in a cab, or creep up to the cashier in a parking garage. I do not think I thought about it as much when I lived in the suburbs, and was better protected […]

The Israeli Defense Force was starting work as I went to bed last night. The dawn was just coming up there, and the independent fire units were processing targets as battlefield intelligence queued them up. I turned in as they turned it up, and the clock radio gave me the status of the day’s work […]

Star Ferry Oh, it is a strange morning. It has been so strange for so long that the magnitude of what is happening now is lost to context. Israel is engaged in a two front war, bombing Beirut International. My car salesman is named Mohammed, and he is from Palestine. He is concerned. His family […]

My cab driver the other day was from Mumbai, or properly, a village about an hour a way. I asked him if he was Hindu, thinking that the great south of the subcontinent was mostly of that faith. He said, no, he was a Muslim. He dropped me by the pool at Big Pink, where […]

They let Grammy-winner Li’l Kim out of jail the other day. She is the biggest selling female rapper in history, and a feisty young woman. She dodged a purely metaphorical bullet, unlike some of her male contemporaries, when she was locked up last year for lying about a 2001 altercation between her entourage and some […]

Parallel Universe It is a curious thing to me that the only place that stainless steel can be bent into the perfect curves to meet the frame of an old muscle-truck is in the wilds of Loudoun County. One would think that there would be a facility to bend stainless steel located closer to the […]