So I wasted the day yesterday waiting for my bed to get here. It was very Thurber-esque. I thought about the memorable opening line: “I suppose that the high-water mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father.” We had to read the Thurber story as part of […]

I watched the State of the Union Address last night,, my job as a concerned voter. I was still a little agitated from the afternoon and remarkably alert considering the hour. I watched the Dan Rather filter on the address, but even CBS had a hard time spinning the message, since it was all the […]

I just walked in from Garrett County, poorest in the state of Maryland and thus the wealthiest in West Virginia if it were annexed. Which it could have been. Garret County forms the panhandle of Maryland, a Neverland of the Free State high in the mountains. Every place up there proudly sells crabcakes, the state […]

It is eight degrees in Frederick, and about that in Fairfax. There is a breeze, too. Wind chill will be way below zero. I think I can do the day on Metro today, stay safe underground on my journeys around Washington. It is a useful thing, considering how cold it is going to be. Pipes […]

OK, I’m a traveling man. Or was. I enjoy the motion, and have a limited attention span which enjoys stimulation. I can be happy enough staying in one place and I like my ruts as well as the next. I have not traveled officially since a strange trip to a conclave of Indians on the […]

I was in Hanoi, in June of 1995. I was sitting three stiff chairs away from Le Duc Ahn, former general, architect of the invasion of Cambodia and President of the Socialist Republic. I wouldn’t have been there except for Mr. Clinton’s unfortunate letter to his Draft Board. With the stigma of the Draft Dodging […]

A dusting of snow is falling on the city. It will snarl the commute. Already the pandemonium has begun. A commuter lost control of his vehicle approaching Arlington on I-66 where it narrows to two inbound lanes and flipped the guardrail and put his car on the Metro tracks, reducing the Orange Line to single […]

So I am a slug this morning. I got up at the usual time, blasted out by the uncaring alarm. The radio was still playing softly across the bed. I had left it on when sleep overcame me and I had a vague recollection of classical music in my forgotten dreams. I had no need […]

It is smack on six o’clock. I am up early and bushy-tailed because I have to be at a stultifying monthly meeting at the Facility at nine and have a stop at the Company before that. There is nothing happening here except last night’s dishes. There are bombs in Afghanistan and Robots on Mars. The […]

The first color ones are to be released from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, site of the thumping USC administered to my Wolverines last Thursday. I am coming to terms with it, slowly. The loss, that is, not the Mars landing. The Europeans bounced a science package off the surface last week and something […]