General Sun Tzu, from 6th Century China Congress is back in town as of yesterday afternoon, though there was some confusion about that in Secretary of State Blinken’s testimony to the House via Zoom call. The Secretary participated from his office, three miles away from Capitol Hill, since he thought the House was still on […]

One of the great experiences in life is being part of a complex machine designed to do extraordinary things. A sublimation of “personal” interest to the unified mass of a good cause. We were arguing- no, “discussing” current affairs- down at the Loading Dock this morning. Climate change was one of the topics up first, […]

There was a lot of emotion swirling around yesterday. You may have felt it in a different way than the crowd down by the Loading Dock at Refuge Farm. It is understandable, for a variety of perfectly understandable reasons. DeMille produced a fascinating document that outlined the trauma of one of the Port Authority cops […]

Tears are running this morning. Most of these anniversaries have passed with a solemn recollection of that morning, one in which the usual meeting was underway in a tower in the greenery by the river. And as the word spread of unusual events began to spread, our world shifted on its normal axis into something […]

So, the morning is passing as they always do. At Refuge Farm, there were tears and sadness in the moment. There were more of those across this amazing land in this lovely awakening dawn. It will be crowded today in the special corner of Arlington National Cemetery, the one nearest the Pentagon. I used to […]

The local paper published some of the memories of the 9/11 attacks this morning. One of them was mine. It will stay with me as long as I live, as it will for all who experienced that morning and the aftermath. https://starexponent.com/news/star-exponent-readers-share-memories-of-9-11/article_ff7e59e7-fa05-5fee-8af2-0c96048de513.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1 The knowledge and memory of it should be something we share on the […]

Nope. The Writer’s Circle is not going to get dragged into any of the astonishing stuff that is going on today. We are at a mid-point, of sorts, between the celebration of the accomplishments of Labor last weekend and the remembrance of the horror that occurred on a lovely morning in Arlington not quite 20 […]

We ran one of Marlow’s observations from his aerie in the Coastal Empire this morning. He summed it up nicely, which is to say he described things happening in our great nation with a sense of uncertainty and doubt. Neither are particularly unusual in the free-for-all that attends our joyful American life, and why this […]

(This diagram reflects a process we used to use on a professional basis to understand how things were going on any given day. It was based on assumptions we used to think were important. A guy named Stanislav Petrov ignored them at work in 1983. Many of these have changed in meaning since we studied […]

There was an almost inadvertent editorial meeting this morning, the one we usually celebrate for the achievements of Labor in an economy in which we appear to be compensating a lot of folks for not working. That includes us, so we will leave it at that. The holiday meant we had decided to enforce quiet […]