The word this morning was that the Russians had fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile. It is supposed to be a new model of the old SS-18 rocket NATO called the “SATAN.” Apparently the Russians have another name for it. The experts said it was a signal directed by Mr. Putin to demonstrate his government’s […]

The Fire Ring was smiling, unusual on a Wednesday. Smiles are normally reserved to sometime after the luncheon break, when the future of this day is pretty much set and the morning bright with promise is relegated to the past. The best we can normally muster at the meeting is to savor the warmth of […]

We had a rough start to the Tuesday Production Meeting. Monday was a busy day for her. One topic of interest had been covered by Arrias, who discussed where the conflict in Ukraine was likely to go, and it included a consideration of the real possibility of the use of WMD. Marlow then had an […]

Arrias led off the production effort on this early Monday morning. Well, it was early, and had an informed discussion of the prospect of the use of atomic weapons. That went along with proofing the manuscript the Chairman has had in various ruck-sacks for about forty years. It was an old story about a sailor […]

Here at Refuge Farm we celebrate a morning of Joy with a time of challenges. You know some of them, and we do not claim to know them all. We know that we have affirmed our faith in the glory of a universe in which we hurtle through the void on a living globe filled […]

(Splash had this montage of old pictures of a little airfield in the Southwest Pacific. It is now called “Honiara International. American Marines called it something else a number of years ago.) Our Attorney had business of her own elsewhere. It is a weekend, and she had “business elsewhere,” which we assumed to be personal […]

Moscow sunk. No kidding. In the draft to this, the Writer’s Section used a sailor expression rather than the sanitized version. We held off in the account yesterday morning of shouting “Moskva Sunk!“ which was part of the narrative that was going around. It was such a dramatic story the group thought it was probably […]

(Slava-class warship Moskva in the Bosphorus last year, looking better than this morning, by report). We tried to swing the conversation away from Ukraine in the Weather Report this week. You saw a glimpse of the drumbeat from overseas. China is restive. Japan is considering re-orienting its military, once strictly limited to defensive purposes since […]

This is a day to celebrate country living! The Spring is upon us in spurts that remind us that progress is erratic at times, but the process is immutable. They say things will cool again in a few days, back in sweaters on the back deck for smoke breaks we call “bird watching.” That sounds […]

We had the meeting late this morning, since two of us had to go perform a Field Investigation. Normally, that involves putting down the steaming mug of Chock Full O’ Nuts and looking southeast down across the pasture now starting to shout brilliant GREEN in the placid Piedmont Spring awakening. This was a different matter, […]