27 December 2002   Once Over, Lightly   It is five in the morning here on Arlington Boulevard, but it is ten hundred hours in London, and the world has already been hard at work. I stumble out of bed and note that Venus is hanging in the east and the Moon is at half. […]

24 December 2002   Manger Square   Vicky Barker is in good voice this morning. It is Christmas Eve and there are some important gestures happening around the world. The President of the United States has given me the afternoon off. Not me alone, of course, it is the entire Federal Workforce. Because of the […]

But here is how fast it is. The other evening. I was motoring sedately down Glebe Road- a major north-south artery here in Arlington. It is an old road, sort of like Outer Drive in Detroit, which isn’t anymore. This one ran to the Glebe House of the Church of England in Colonial times but […]

20 December 2002   Sticks and Stones   I am in an African frame of mind this morning, a cold mist outside my window and a long drive to come just after dawn. I had the best time talking to my friend from the Agency for International Development at the bar last night. He is […]

12 December 2002   Happy Holidays   The North Koreans are opening up the reactor for the production of enriched uranium at Yong Byon, the one we were in Pyongyang to talk about. I remember being hot-boxed by the Northerners the first night, tired, pushed hard for concessions after dinner, our phone calls back to […]

Freezing Rain Bob Ryan was right. This is going to be a nasty, messy winter. It is raining a cold hard sprinkle on the pavement and the once-white frozen drifts left over from last week. It is dark, of course, and later it promises to be a reprise of yesteray’s raw gray bluster, only with […]