(The cover of Walter Lord’s landmark book). December 7th, 1941, America was at peace. Onboard the grey ships in the harbor, Chaplains wakened early to get ready for holy services. Mess cooks rose to begin to cook masses of eggs, rashers of bacon, and vats of potatoes for the crews. It was Sunday, the day […]

(Senior Chief Bobbie K. Hubbard, USN-Ret. Photo Socotra) We are having a cold spell on the East Coast. No snow yet, but some places in the Midwest already have feet of the white stuff. Low clouds, intermittent rain. We are only permitted to smoke outdoors by management, so our attention to the wet chill breeze […]

(Image courtesy of CNBC. Dr. Fauci noted in his remarks that “I don’t care if you’re a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat, everybody deserves to have the safety of good public health and that’s not happening.”) This was a tough morning at the Writer’s Section. We normally enjoy Mondays. As mostly retired people- retired […]

(Mr. Samuel Bankman-Fried, noted fraudster and current crypto celebrity. His image is used in low resolution for identification purposes only and not to violate extensive regulations on copyright infringement). This is a strange morning. Or better said, it is ‘morning.’ We trickled into the Sunday AM staff meeting in an irregular fashion dependent on when […]

(Dad drew the figures on the left and right in color, unusual for his work at the time. He had done portrait sketches  which was mostly B&W pen and ink. Time was 1947. Like most of the young men of his time, the healthy ones, anyway, he had spent his time in uniform. Mom had a […]

(The late Christine McVie, noted composer and vocalist. She became famous as a member of the band Fleetwood Mac. Her public obituary cited her ‘passing from a short illness.’ Image courtesy Wikipedia). Someone rose in the darkness and screwed around with the coffee maker and the bacon. We like the bacon crisp and as flat […]

Amen to short-illness-syndrome being quick to kill you. We caught the early OG version in January 2020 at a Chinse soup dumpling place down on South Florida’s Dade County where the servers were from mainland China. How did we know where they were from, you might rightfully ask. Well, at our table was our guide […]

Traditionally, this is a pivotal week in the average year. We have celebrated a joyful holiday replete with good food and fellowship with family and fellow citizens. Then, Friday dawned with a traditional surge toward the malls to commence the frenzy of Christmas shopping, to be followed by a gigantic buzz on Cyber Monday. We […]

(Reports this morning are that China’s former leader Jiang Zemin has died at the age of 96. He came to power after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, an event that echoes some of the growing frustration with China’s response to the Covid virus. Image from our friends at Reuters). We have veered from our […]

There was a vigorous discussion about Latin out on the balcony this morning. A bit chill and gray skies that suggest the onset of moisture falling from the sky.  Well, actually the vigor was more about something called ‘grammar.’ That would normally start with a lower-case letter unless it referred to your Mom’s Mom, both correctly […]