I did the Swamp Postcard this week as usual, though of course anxiety rates are up in the Last Week before something happens. I got a note back from a very smart pal. She thought I had assumed a stark perspective on things as they progressed in this marvelous election campaign. I nodded in agreement […]

We have been through a lot together in this strange year of rounded numbers and masks. I appreciate your sticking around for it all. I am already off a step- I had assumed things would be quiet this week except for the anguished pleas from a variety of podiums, buried scandals and breathless polling. Not […]

I read a newspaper this morning. I know, I know, so what? That was something that was the core of my morning routine for more than a half-century. Depending on what was going on and where I happened to be, sometimes it was multiple papers representing a variety of viewpoints. The digital age transformed that […]

I wrote the words this morning in the gray pre-dawn. It had been a marvelous display of the end of season, the death of warmth and sunshine, and the gentle scudding of whimsical white clouds. Now it is an endless stream of chill rain and the patter of drops on the awning insistent enough to […]

I was scooping digitally through files from the three or four computers that lurk in various states of confusion in the cubbyholes under the desk in the great room of the farmhouse in the country. I don’t know about you, but this has been one of the more extraordinary public events I have seen in […]

There is supposed to be something happening in the Senate judiciary Committee this morning. We will see about that, although fully ten cardboard placards were seated in their living occupied seats. It was different yesterday. I reserved my arguments to the festivities surrounding oral surgery in a town 40-odd miles down the road. Maybe there […]

I don’t know how your dinner table is doing this week. Mine is filled with mutterings and amazement. The good news is that some sort of resolution to this garish display of national disunity may be coming in less than two weeks. The bad news is that may not be true, and this national litmus […]

Author’s Note: It is about time to put the manuscript to bed for the search for the District Stones. It was a grand adventure, and included history both known and unknown. It was a minor epic worth living amid urban elegance and squalor, the worlds of the living and the dead. I will have the […]

This shambling monstrosity of two campaigns is being crystalized into the chosen two narratives in time for the final stretch down to the election. Before this morning’s news, I had the COVID alarm coming down in emphasis, with the various interpretations of the President’s hospitalization last week. His narrative is that there is only fear […]

Author’s Note: There is a fair amount of activity going on this morning. It is lovely and clear skies in Culpeper. The national top bill, of course, is the Barrett hearing on the Hill. Quick reaction from listening to parts of it, is that the opponents to her nomination are essentially folding on the matter, […]