Dear Gentle Readers, The Fire Ring is damp this morning and the Usual Suspects instead gathered in the Bunk House for fresh and richly brewed Chock Full o’ Nuts and idle banter. Splash provided one of the “Letters to the Editor” from the Coffee Company, which protested our misspelling a week or more ago, and […]

We have to do the Weather Report this week, and it looks a bit like the local forecast for last night. Maybe Thunderstorms, according to the Lady in Red on the flatscreen. She was taking about local weather in Washington, which we are supposed to believe is something universal, and ‘Maybe’ it is. There are […]

We are aware that times require change. For example, in ordinary correspondence, the footnotes now come first, in an effort to deflect potential consequences of a misunderstanding in meaning. We have tried to explain that as art of a phenomenon in which the meaning of former universally accepted meanings is change in mid-debate, and the […]

Oh, how the anniversaries pass! We have had a week of them. The struggle at Midway Island was almost complete 80 years ago. We were surprised to see that two aviators from that day were honored- as still-living men- on the decks of a ship named to commemorate the victory. Some of us sailed in […]

A glorious Piedmont day out there, two in a row! There is not quite the same unbridled joy in the gentle caress of a warming waft of air under the limitless blue of the sky and the golden radiance of our solar disc whose welcome rays slowly illuminated the south end of the bunk house, […]

(The south pastures in their summer glory. Mermaids and heavenly discs crafted here, evoking the magic of oceans we sailed. A smile beneath a beret in Marseilles, or a view of a Monument in silhouette along a Wall. A day of blessings!) We could start with the usual insightful liturgy on the lunacy abroad in […]

This is Victor Davis Hanson’s view. It is a powerful read. – Vic What Now, Ukraine? We are on new ground, in which a nonnuclear Western ally—understandably but dangerously—may now seek to destroy a nuclear Russia’s assets on Russian soil or in neutral or even Russian seas. By: Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness May 29, […]

(The SITREP 03 June 1942. Imperial Japan advances. Map courtesy of Britannica) As you know, this is a year framed in recollection. Ten years ago Admiral Mac Showers was one of the last survivors of Joe Rochefort’s HYPO codebreakers at Pearl Harbor. He traveled out to Pearl for the 70th anniversary before departing this life […]

This is a short outing this morning due to routine medical appointments in a town thirty miles away from Refuge Farm. Nothing alarming, just assessment interventions based on age. But time consuming and an extravagant allocation of energy resources in an increasingly austere environment that Washington told us they could do little about. Splash snickered […]

The 80th Anniversary of one of the historic battles in Naval annals is almost on us. For those in the National Capital region with an interest, a ceremony will be held at the World War Two Memorial on Friday, 03 June: Our intelligence community mentor RADM Mac Showers was an Ensign in The Dungeon at […]