(Valentina Grizodubova’s bust in Moscow, 1998). Shipmate Vic met Valentina in 1998, just five years after her passing in 1993. None of us knew her then. Vic brought her up since he had been visiting Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov back in 1998. He had wanted to do that since he had opposed the […]

We are starting the second week of Advent, and we hope you can help us remember it is no longer “Hope,” but the “Peace” that we can bring to our affairs on this small part of this Earth. Accordingly, we asked some of the Zoomers to do a short piece on where we live. The […]

(West Coast Guy, the Lovely Bea, and the indomitable Admiral Mac Showers in 2012, the year everything changed. The youngsters of World War II began their exit, and in the over the next few years they were all gone from this earth and on to others. We passed Arizona’s monument on the ferry each day […]

We hate to start a weekend with something technical, but we are attempting to understand the source of some of the strange stuff going on in news and messaging last week. We failed due to holiday festivities and because the shores along the vast torrent of cash is inconceivable to us ordinary citizens. And some […]

At 18:25 tonight, the sky over Fairfax County- and yours- pulled a stunt. The full moon cleared the rooftops in a hard white glare, bright enough to bleach the contrails that had been drifting east all afternoon. By chance — perfect, impossible chance — they crossed right over the moon, forming a giant asterisk in […]

Creative Section Leader Miles was clearly uncomfortable on this last weekday of the Advent week of Hope. He had hoped to clear the deck of some of the great tides in social affairs that are moving with slow but inexorable speed. He had asked Rocket and Splash to sort things things out a bit, and […]

Happy Hour hadn’t started yet when there was a startled roar from the end of the Conference Table that has the unobstructed view east through thr floor-to-ceiling windows in the east side of the building. From the 4th floor there is currently a broad view of the territory where Fairfax protrudes into Arlington. It is […]