(Nina Jankowitz official picture) It’s a new world, all right. Our panel of Fire Ring experts and hacks was naturally energized by a bunch of stuff. We are at swirl in the latest lunacy, some of it bringing up old mysteries in the swirl of a more recent one reaching its expiration date, and others […]

Summer is still three weeks away, but Virginia’s Piedmont has the moist rag of heat waving across us for the first taste of the season of warmth and perspiration to come. It was a bit of languor on the deck above the Fire Ring, a coolness of night still emanating from the siding, intermingling with […]

MapDescription automatically generated Locating: Otsego Ski Club was just east of town. West ten miles was the cabin on a little lake in the woods near tiny Elmira. Two miles to M-131 and north past Boyne Mountain, big-time Michigan skiing, and eventual to Petoskey, where Dad was Mayor pro tem and I thought I was […]

Some of the crowd around the Fire Ring at Refuge Farm were wearing shorts. The Lady in Red on the flatscreen in the bunk house had done an ominous turn in her weather reporting, saying that the relatively cool Spring was going to transition into a weekend with temperatures in the 90s. Splash was wearing […]

It was a glorious morning in Virginia’s Piedmont. There had been a full moon in a clear sky, one filled with celestial mystery. There was an argument of unusual intensity for the early morning as the circle around the Fire Ring discussed it. Some called the illumination in this burgeoning month of growth the “Flower […]

The Writer’s Section was scrambling this morning. The skies were bright, some of the humidity had passed with the rain clouds that swept up. The Weather Report we do for the Chairman needed some work to connect all the dots that don’t seem to actually point anywhere. There is still enormous concentration on the Special […]

A dizzying morning at Refuge Farm. Not a product of sleep enhanced by prescription medications or Belmont Farms fine beverages. Just lunacy that spirals with the speed of technological change. That was the case last night. A cool cloudy day with sporadic bursts of rain kept conversation under the awning. Supply and labor issues have […]

(One member of the Writer’s Section first knew this building when the blue diamonds of the façade decorated the glass frontage of a single-story Chevy Dealership in Arlington, VA. The quotation incorporated in this grand new Accenture Building is a welcome ironic note today). We took a drive in the country yesterday. An accident of […]

It is Friday the 13th. The writers at Refuge Farm are aware of that, and traveling anyway on a gray morning. There is a luncheon to attend, and a book to be promoted. The Section pooled limited resources, hired our Bolivian driver, and are prepared to don acceptable Capital Area clothing and hurtle across the […]

(USS Yorktown in port Pearl Harbor, 29 May 1942 for combat repairs after the Battle of Coral Sea. The Shipyard had some timely orders to have her ready for sea in three days. Something big was in store. Photo USN). There is plenty to talk about this morning. Plenty of stuff overseas as the Russian […]