The race went under cloudy skies and a cool breeze. Almost perfect. Some prefer crisp and cold, but the challenge of being ready to go and the hour or so that you have to kill waiting for the starting cannon is always problematic. These conditions were about perfect, provided it does not begin to rain. […]

I rounded the corner to get to my truck. I had caught part of the first half downtown at the Polit-tiki bar, a place with pressed tin ceiling and a bizarre Polynesian sports and political theme. The game was at the half, and I didn’t need any more beer. Michigan was comfortably ahead and it […]

I sometimes get plastered at the Caf� Asia on Wilson Blvd. Down in Rosslyn. They sell sushi and alcohol in a very post-modern airy room with big glass windows and the wait staff is all from Asia. Some of the girls are right off the boat and some are second and third generation Americans. It […]

The Dragon Lady was seventy-eight when Concorde first flew a commercial route in January of 1976. The Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Chek, the Dragon Lady’s husband, was in his grave just a year. He passed in 1975 and work on his garish blue and white mausoleum was nearly complete in downtown Taipei. When I first saw it, […]

He who loses, wins the race, And parallel lines meet in space. — John Boyd, “Last Starship from Earth” On Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide truck loaded with six tons of explosives crashed through a barrier and detonated at the four-story headquarters of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Beirut International Airport in Lebanon. 241 […]

I am guilty. I write this nonsense far earlier than I should, sometimes without the necessary caffeine coursing through my brain. And my fact-checkers are inept creatures, old pensioners in worn Naval tunics, kahki ones with the giant pockets that can accomodate a whole carton of Camel Straights. I don’t know why I keep them […]

They are doing something very peculiar at the Metro Stations these days. They have people in safety vests handing out a broadsheet of some thirty-odd pages of newsprint. It is stapled together at the spine, and I thought it was advertising or a polemic the first time someone handed it to me. I glanced at […]

It was silent in Boston, where a million blue television screens reflected the eleventh inning Yankee home run that put them out of their misery. Twenty-nine times the Yankees have done that, sending the Red Socks packing, slinking back to the visitor’s locker room to change in silence, eager to get out of Dodge and […]

It is a historic baseball week. Yesterday, the Yankees took a second game from the Red Socks at fabled Fenway Park, and will likely eject the Sox from their chance at the World Series. The Cubs were stunned by the Marlins. It was one of the appalling moments in sports. A fan reached out to […]

The new Governor of California is a muscular Austrian with a playful sense of humor. He once said he admired Hitler. What a kidder! He has been elected for a three year term, if the electorate doesn’t decide to recall him. There is no getting around America’s love affair with show-biz, and here we go […]